Dreams of Hades
by LeighaGreene
Summary: "He gave her the gift of belonging, even if it was only with him[...] She made him happy, like nothing else ever had. Together, they were both more than they ever could have been alone, or with anyone else." Severus Hades/Lily Persephone. Mary Potter background and magic (Powers, aspects, etc.). Otherwise canon-compliant. 1975-1998. Subversion of the Abduction of Persephone.
1. The First Act

**Dreams of Hades**

A Harry Potter Fan Fiction

* * *

I. The First Act

* * *

As implied by the subtitle 'FAN FICTION,' I do not own most of the characters in this story, and at least some of the major plot events and settings. If you recognize them, you doubtless know who does. This story is written for fun, not profit, and I have and will receive no money in relation to it.


	2. Fifteen - 1975

"I had a dream last night," Lily said, dropping to her knees beside him, under their favorite tree by the lake.

Severus had had a dream, too. The only part he remembered was having his throat ripped out by a giant, evil snake. The pain had been thoroughly disconcerting in its realism.

He rolled his eyes, focusing on his silent levitation of leaves and pebbles. "What of it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you _do_ normally have dreams?"

Lily laughed, high and sharp. Her laugh always reminded him of winter sunlight lancing through bare branches, even at the height of summer. "Not like this one. This one was true."

Severus dropped his spell, focusing on green eyes and copper waves glinting bright, a vision of spring, despite the chill in the air and the smell of autumn on the wind. "How do you know?"

"I just do."

"Well, what happened in it?"

She hummed, and smiled, the private, crooked smile reserved for him and thunderstorms. "We were older, you more than me, and married, for one." Well, that sounded much better than _his_ dream. "You had stolen me away from the Light, or so they all thought – really I had wanted to go with you all along. Who else knows me, after all?"

"Who indeed?" he murmured, smirking.

She returned the expression with interest, but her attention wandered as she continued to speak. "I kept up the play, but it was… strange. They thought me a victim, they knew but didn't know… a long game of pretense, not unlike our current project, but… cut closer to the surface with the lies." Her gaze left the greying sky and found his own again as she said, "There was a time and place where I didn't have to lie at all. You were its king, and I its uncontested mistress."

"Sounds nice," he murmured, too quiet, he thought, for her to hear, but she answered anyway, with a smile as sharp and merciless as her laugh.

" _Paradise_."

Severus shivered, and it had nothing to do with the suddenly-cold wind off the water.


	3. Sixteen - 1976

"I can't believe you slept with _Black_ ," he sneered contemptuously, though his heart was breaking behind the mask. First she truly rejected him after the spat by the lake, then she refused to speak to him all summer, and now _this_? Maybe he would have been better off if he had just done what he'd been half-seriously considering all summer: brew a poison, drink it down, and be done with it. After all, the only person who gave a damn apparently wasn't the person he thought she was, and didn't care about him at all. "Though I suppose the two of you are well-matched: he a blood traitor, you a mudblood, and the both of you fucking sluts of the highest order!"

His words were meant to wound, but they failed to make a mark.

"If I'm a mudblood, so are you, Severus _Snape_." He redoubled his glare for that. Tobias Snape had tainted his blood, alright, though more by being specifically himself – an abusive, drunken wretch of a man – rather than as a muggle in general. "And pull your head out of your fucking arse – It's just _sex_."

"It's not _just sex_! It's sex with the enemy! Black has made my life here a fucking _misery_ , and you – you let him win you over – you fucking _reward_ him with – with –" he trailed off incoherently as she laughed, somewhere between mocking and genuinely amused.

" _Reward_? Yeah, sure – the reward he fucking deserved."

"What. Is. _That_. Supposed to mean?" he asked as coldly as he could.

"It _means_ , Sev, that sex is a tool, like any other tool, and I am most certainly not some prize to be won over, _especially_ by the likes of Sirius _fucking_ Black!" Her lips twisted in a cruel parody of a smile, a knife-edge painted in blood. " _Think_! Think about what happens now – now that James Potter's so-called best friend has had the one thing Potter can't get! Think about what happens when the love of Black's life turns on him, calls him a traitor and casts _him_ out! It will serve the two of them right for what they did to you!"

And in that moment the world, dangerously off kilter for nearly three months, abruptly righted itself. Lily Evans was still a cold-blooded, bone-deep bitch, but she was also still on his side. She had not abandoned him as he feared – not truly, and not forever. Still, he was not certain he had it in him to forgive her this, for in giving herself to _him_ , she had hurt Severus almost as much as Potter and Black. "You ought not to have made such a sacrifice on my account," he said stiffly.

"Oh, Sev… I would make _any_ sacrifice on your account, if only I thought you would accept my help." Was _that_ what her silent treatment had been about? The fact that he had pushed her away, by the lake? "And so far as sacrifices go," she laughed, breaking the tension. "Well, you know what they say – practice makes perfect – and Black is far more of a slut than I."

"Circe's cunt, I hope you used protection – he's probably caught the pox from a muggle whore."

"Of course I did – what _do_ you take me for? I'm not going to end up with his diseases _or_ his spawn, I promise you that. Now!" she clapped imperiously, changing the subject. "Now _that's_ out of the way, you may apologize for your behavior by the lakeside, last term!"

They both knew she meant 'I'm sorry for the way I reacted to your behavior by the lakeside last term.'

They both knew she would never actually say 'I'm sorry.'

"What makes you think I'm going to take you back? Maybe you used up your last chance this summer."

She laughed again, as though this were the best joke she had heard in a long while. "You will always forgive me, Sev, and I will always make the sacrifices that need to be made and destroy those who would stand between us, and we will always come back to each other in the end. We're going to be someone, someday, remember? King and queen of paradise, _together_."

There were days, he thought, when he was certain she was insane, but he could not deny that he would always forgive her, no matter how she hurt him, as long as she was his. Besides, this was the closest they were ever likely to get to a real apology. " _Always_ ," he breathed, and she threw herself into his arms.

"I missed you, Sev."

He had no choice but to embrace her.

(He never had.)

"I missed you, too, Lily."


	4. Seventeen - 1977

He finished the bottle and threw it into the lit fireplace, relishing the burn and the shatter. He could no longer feel the tears running down his face. If only the alcohol had done as good a job numbing the feelings behind them as it had with his lips and cheeks, perhaps he would be able to stop thinking, to sleep.

"Sev. Severus Augustus Snape. Listen to me," Lily demanded, grabbing his head with both hands and guiding his unsteady feet to the couch that looked uncannily like the one from her parents' front room.

"No'gustus," he slurred. _It's Aquinas_ , he almost said (or tried to say), but stopped himself in time. She could still guess. It had been years, and she hadn't, but he wouldn't ruin their game, even tonight.

Lily ignored him. "Enough, Sev. You know as well as I do that alcohol isn't going to help."

He glared at her, scowled. After… how long now? Eight years? Ten? He had no idea – he hated numbers even when he wasn't pissed. Half their lives and more, in any case. After so long, it seemed she was immune. "Th' 'ell i' won'!"

"It's okay to feel things, you know," Lily said, wrapping her arms around him.

"'S no'," he claimed, belligerently. He couldn't, wouldn't, feel, not for _her_ , not if he could help it – he hated her, for leaving her family for Tobias Snape, for never taking him away from the abusive bastard, for falling to drink and melancholy herself, and now for leaving him, for her stupid, hateful note: waiting until he was old enough to take care of himself – that was fucking rich! As though he hadn't been looking out for himself for fucking _years_! She had abandoned him _long_ before she _committed fucking suicide_. He knew he should feel sorry for her, that her life had been so bad that she had chosen _death_ instead, but the only feeling for her in his heart was _rage_.

"Crucio?" a soothing voice whispered hesitantly. "Imperio? Avada kedavra? Ékstasi kai tréla? Pomilovan? Ignis infernalis?"

Dark magic – all the spells powered by negative emotions. Hate, domination, and disdain, fear, angst, and rage…

There was something to be said for knowing someone half your life and more.

 _'What are you feeling?'_ he heard. ' _Are you seeking pain? Control? To kill (or die)? To lose yourself in madness?' (Or perhaps 'do you fear you are?') 'Do you wish for oblivion? Destruction?'_

She stopped when he stiffened in the circle of her arms. "It's okay," she repeated. "Tell me who, and I'll help you. We'll burn them to the ground."

" _Her._ But e'en you can' burn the' dead," he muttered into her shoulder – when had he got _there_? "No' e'en a _ghost_. Jus' _dead_."

"Oh, Sev… someday the two of us will rule in Hell, and we shall burn whomever we like – all those who have hurt you and tormented you over the years will fall before us, and she will be first among them. I _promise_. And you _know_ I keep my promises, Sev."

He finally passed out to the sound of harsh, dark, beautiful words and incongruently gentle fingers working their way through his awful, greasy, too-long hair, as though he was a child again, falling asleep in her bed for the first time.

As though he was _wanted_.


	5. Eighteen - 1978

They stood on the balcony of the southwestern-most tower under a full moon, snow falling softly around them.

"I – I know it has to be this way," Lily said, brushing too-hot fingertips over the freshly implanted, still-sensitive Mark. He shoved the pain aside. It was unimportant, truly.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry – I wish –" _If I could have avoided it, you know I would have done_.

"D-Don't ap-pologize, Sev. 'S not y-your f-fault."

"Don't try to make me feel better, Lily," he said sharply. "I failed. We both know it."

She shook her head. "It was always going to be this way. You have to join the Dark, you see, if you are to one-day steal me from the Light. It's just – too _soon_. I – I knew it was c-coming. I – I just d-didn't want-t-to believe it. Sev!"

She threw herself into his arms, sorely testing his control and his expressionless façade. "I'm sorry, Lily," he repeated.

She pulled back, just enough to look up into his face. "S-so… I guess this is g-goodbye, then? For now, at least?"

"I… I guess it is."

She wrapped herself around him as tightly as she could, burying herself in his cloak. They stood there for a long moment, watching the snow fall over the grounds. A wolf howled in the distance. Finally, Lily pulled herself together and stepped back. (He would never let go first.)

"Goodbye, Severus." She walked away, and did not look back.

"Goodbye, Lily," Severus whispered. He felt his heart break as he realized that he was now dead to her.

It was just as well: he was dead inside as well.


	6. Nineteen - 1979

One year and four months after the last time he spoke to her (on their last night at Hogwarts, politely, as if they were strangers); four months and more since she had given herself over to the Light, tying herself irrevocably to _Potter_ , his _wife_ , Severus saw her again, in battle.

He had, of course, seen her fight before, at Moel Tŷ Uchaf and Hogsmeade, and even at her wedding, but those battles had been nothing like this one. Fuck, Bella had been _playing_ with her at her wedding.

 _This_ was destruction: death, pure and simple.

The Death Eaters stormed down the Alley, cutting down bystanders and the opposing forces alike, Severus among them, doing his part without hesitation, a nameless, faceless soldier in the Dark Lord's army. They left fewer wounded, this time – more deadly curses, more _killing_ curses, filling the air. Lily did her best with the fallen, healing her comrades and the innocent almost as efficiently as he cut them down, but there were too many Death Eaters, and the Light were losing, badly.

He saw the moment she snapped.

The wizard she had been healing sat up, ready to return to the fight, or be transported away for further attention, and was struck down by a bolt of deadly green, and the healer stiffened, standing straight, heedless of the danger.

Magic spilled out of her, and even from here, he could see her eyes, lit from within, glowing with the same unnatural light, as though she had taken an Avada into herself, and would cast it back with a glare.

He watched, transfixed, as she cast a Soulfire Circle around herself – a warning to those who could recognize it, who would know what it meant that the flames were dark and hateful.

It seemed no one – or no one else – did.

She captured three of his fellow Death Eaters as though it was nothing; no magic crossed the Soulfire barrier; even the killing curse warped around it. He watched with half an eye as she healed her captives' wounds and he fended off Black – he had lost his mask, somewhere in the fighting, and of course the bastard had gone out of his way to engage him. He was distracted by a particularly nasty chain of light battle spells, but he turned to look as he saw the flames burst outward, now twisted into rune-shapes he recognized as Phoenician, just in time to see her cut their throats with a terrible, ruthless efficiency: three lives sacrificed to raise _dozens_ of others and bind them to her will, which shouldn't be _possible_ – it hadn't been three days – they couldn't be inferi…

Dead Hands.

They had to be Hands, bound to her will, body _and soul_.

A soulfire runecast necromantic paling, designed to create Dead Hands, powered by a triple human sacrifice, executed on Samhain, of all days.

(Bellatrix called the retreat, but the same wards that had hemmed in their targets over the past hour now pinned the Death Eaters as well.)

They wouldn't last long, but in the meanwhile, the Death Eaters, Severus among them, were _fucked_.

(The tide of the battle turned as those Death Eaters smart enough and experienced enough to know what they were seeing disengaged, tried to run for it.)

It was a beautiful (utterly deranged) example of the Black Arts, melded seamlessly with at least two of the Greater Dark Arts, but they were still completely and utterly _buggered_.

(One Hand alone was hardly more effective than a muggle on the attack, albeit harder to kill – intelligent, fearless, immune to pain, impossible to stop without destroying the body entirely, and utterly implacable – but in droves, guided by a single will, against opponents spread out to cast spells and now surrounded by the dead?)

The Hands fell upon the Death Eaters with a vengeance, taking to their mission as though under the Imperius, and every man who died rose again to attack his former allies.

(The Light was every bit as terrified as the Dark, running madly for cover, causing even more chaos, though the Hands ignored them completely, making directly for the Death Eaters with none of the shambling clumsiness of inferi, and no fear of fire.)

Twenty-two of his comrades fell to the dead (and the fiendfire conjured by their own side in a futile attempt to drive them back) before they managed to break through the Ministry Anti-Disapparition wards and escape.

All Severus could think was _perhaps she is not entirely lost to the Light after all_.


	7. Twenty - 1980

"As you all know," the Dark Lord announced, his high, sibilant voice resonating throughout every corner of the Audience Chamber, where the Inner Circle (Severus recently included) had assembled, "there has been some… confusion, as to whether it is the child of the Longbottoms or the child of the Potters referred to in the prophecy."

Severus kept his face carefully impassive. So far as he knew, only he and Bellatrix, and perhaps Lucius, knew the contents of the few lines he had overheard – the others knew only that the child of one of these families was supposedly fated to be of interest to the Dark Lord.

 _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…_

He had hardly expected the Dark Lord to take the prophecy seriously when he had reported it, but it seemed he had – neither Alice Longbottom nor Lily Evans had been seen in the field for well over a year, now, and various agents had claimed, months since, that this was because they were pregnant. Severus himself had heard in November that Lily had had a child, but he had no idea when.

"It has come to our attention that Dumbledore believes the child of the Prophecy to be the Potter babe. Put the word out to your men – the one who brings me the location of the Potters will be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams…"

Severus could not concentrate on anything that happened in the remainder of the meeting. Even being threatened with the Cruciatus for his inattention hardly registered against the fact that Lily was about to come under fire by the Dark Lord himself.

He lingered afterward to prostrate himself before his Lord and beg a boon: " _Please_ , my Lord," he had whispered, on his knees. "The mother of the Prophesied Child, Potter's wife… Lily Evans, I beg of you, Master, please, spare her life."

He met the Dark Lord's eyes, let him see the depth of his once friendship, the love he still held for the woman who had been the center of his world for more than half of his life, hoping against hope that there was yet something human enough in the immortal's soul to take pity on him and honor his request.

"This girl..." he had hissed, "This _is_ the _Lily Evans_ who has so _plagued_ my efforts to invoke the Powers on the major sabbats, is it _not,_ Snape?"

"Y-yes, Master," Severus had stuttered.

"Then _no_ , my servant… Lord Voldemort will _not_ spare her life. Meddling with Powers she has no right to know, seducing the last scion of a pureblood house and soiling his line… If we are so _fortunate_ as to come across this chit, a living symbol of all that is wrong with our country, she will be snuffed out like the worthless, mudgrubbing whore that she is! Perhaps Bella is right to question your loyalty, with such emotional ties as _this_! _Crucio!_ "

Severus did not know how long he screamed and twitched under the Unforgivable, but when it was lifted, he crawled forward, shaking, to kiss the hem of his mad lord's robes. "Forgive me, my Lord," he simpered. "I am your loyal servant – until death and beyond!"

"Get out of my sight!"

Severus fled to the Castle, slinking, defeated, to his quarters to mourn the death sentence of the only person who ever truly cared for him. By the time the sun rose, he had come to a conclusion: he must forsake the Dark Lord and beg Dumbledore's mercy, become a double agent in truth.

He had condemned the girl he cared for more than himself, unwillingly and unknowingly, yes, but it was his fault, nevertheless.

The Dark had refused to spare her.

The Light, it seemed, was his only hope, his last chance to correct the mistake which had placed her life at risk.

He only hoped that his information, his potential as a loyal spy, would be worth her safety.


	8. Twenty-One - 1981

The Mark _burned_ , not only with pain, as it normally did, but with heat, flaring, pulling on his magic, a brand held to the _inside_ of his skin that no numbing charm or pain-relief potion could dim, had he had the presence of mind to apply them.

It faded quickly, both the pain and the sense of connection that normally underlay the Mark, tying him to the Dark Lord.

Bellatrix was keening.

She vanished the ropes with which Malfoy had bound and apparated directly out of the room, in defiance of her orders. That, more than anything, confirmed the suspicion that seemed the likeliest explanation, given that the Dark Lord had just gone to deal with a child prophesied to have the power to vanquish him, and Lily, who was a formidable opponent in her own right, and Potter, who (though it pained Severus to admit it) was not completely incompetent as a fighter himself.

The Dark Lord was gone. Fallen. Dead? He claimed to be immortal, but depending on his state, that might be a fate worse than death, Severus supposed.

It was Lynch who reported the actual events of the 'vanquishing' – and that was the point at which Severus began to feel distinctly worried, for according to his fellow Death Eater, there had been three flashes of Avada-green light before the magic that tore apart the house.

He left without informing anyone, as Malfoy and his cronies organized their legal defense and Bellatrix tried vainly to convince anyone with two brain cells not to abandon the Cause.

The rest of the night became a shock-blurred mess in his memories: talking to the muggle emergency responders and fire fighters; identifying Lily's body, and her husband's; apparating to Hogwarts to confront Dumbledore for failing to save her, as he had promised he would, in exchange for Severus' vow; somehow, half-mad with grief, negotiating a deal (beyond the Vow which still, somehow, bound him) – protect the child, in exchange for Dumbledore's protection – for it would be only a matter of time until the Aurors tracked him down. He was just as visible and recognizable as any other member of the Inner Circle, but with Dumbledore's support, he might, somehow, escape punishment as a spy for the Light.

After that, he retired to his rooms and, for the second time in his life, got well and truly pissed. This time, however, there was no Lily to comfort him – and there never would be again.

It was wrong. _Wrong_.

She shouldn't have died!

It was _too soon_ – surely he ought to have gone first!

It had surprised him, vaguely, that he made it to age nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, fighting on the front lines of this mad war, and he knew that Lily was doing the same, but somehow, while he had always felt his own mortality acutely in battle, he had never thought that _she_ might die.

And now she had.

And he hadn't.

And it was his fault.

He had been the one to deliver the prophecy.

He should have tried harder to save her – should have found a way to warn her, personally, not trusted her safety to a mad old man and the mercy of a psychopath!

It was the Dark Lord – _Voldemort_ 's fault, too, of course, but he was gone, if not, apparently, dead, and not available to blame. Dumbledore's, for being the one to imply that the Potters were the only choice. Pettigrew's, for betraying their hiding spot – that was unforgivable. How had he even _become_ the Secret Keeper? He _had_ to have known he couldn't keep it from the Dark – Voldemort! And what had happened to that little shit, anyway? He hoped Black and Lupin were out hunting him down. If Severus hadn't been too drunk by half to climb the stairs, let alone apparate, he would have done it himself. Good old _Wormtail_ deserved a long and painful death for his part in Lily's murder.

But then, so did Severus.

He could not kill himself – there was still work to be done, and her child ( _Potter's child_ ) to protect, and his Slytherins (his House would be shaken to its foundations by the political upheaval the Dark Lord's fall was sure to cause) – but he wished he could.

There was no place for him in a world without Lily Evans.


	9. The Interval

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* * *

II. The Interval

* * *

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	10. The Famous One

It took nearly a year for the last of the Death Eater Trials to run its course.

Severus spent the vast majority of that time in what he would later term an Occlumency-induced depression, his emotions artificially distanced from his consciousness, first to deal with the Dementors (thankfully he was only housed in Azkaban for a few weeks, 'due to a clerical error' (because Dumbledore always had enjoyed showering Severus with 'subtle' threats)), and then to _avoid_ dealing with mourning Lily.

His control cracked only once: When the goblin executor of the Potter estate delivered her journals and a letter to him.

 _Dear Sev,_

 _I'm sorry._

 _If you are reading this letter, then I am dead and you are free, and the Dark has probably won…_

He stopped reading there, hands shaking, magic flaring. He could not deal with this. Not now. Not so soon. Her death was still an open wound on his soul, and her words only cut deeper into the void her absence left. If he allowed himself to think on it, on her, his walls would fail entirely, and he would surely collapse under the wave of emotional pain and mourning he had thus-far refused to acknowledge.

He set the letter and the books aside, ruthlessly shoving every thought of her from his conscious mind, focusing on the here-and-now: he could not bear to think of her and the reality of her death when he was busy convincing the Ministry, the Light, and the Public that he was Dumbledore's man and the Dark that he was only using the Old Goat.

It seemed, somehow, deeply ironic, that he should feel more like a spy now than he had in Voldemort's court, or at Hogwarts before he had become a double agent in truth, rather than simply in name. He rather suspected that he hadn't quite done the whole 'spy' thing properly, seeing as Dumbledore had known all along that he _was_ a spy, and he had had permission to act the double agent from Voldemort as well.

Everyone who mattered had always known that he was little more than a glorified messenger-boy, caught between the two of them, but now _literally_ everyone knew the role that he had played.

The _trick_ was in making them all believe that he had been on the 'right' side. _Their_ side – whoever _they_ were.

Fortunately, the still-loyal followers of the Dark were rather the dregs of the movement: the madmen and sadists and zealots. He had little to fear from an attack by any of them (so long as he kept on-guard), though he did not doubt that they would kill him if given half a chance. The free, sane(-ish), self-preservationists who had lined up behind the Malfoys' Imperius defense to publically renounce the Dark Lord and the Cause doubtless all had their suspicions about which side he had chosen, truly, but had little room to throw stones, in any case. If they trusted him a bit less than they had previously, he couldn't bring himself to care.

The Light, by and large, believed whatever Albus Dumbledore told them to believe, and those who didn't tended to take one look at Severus and assume that anyone like _him_ (so obviously antisocial, so un-personable, so clearly oblivious to public perception) could not _possibly_ lie well enough to fool _them_.

These facts made his task merely difficult, rather than outright impossible: as Lily had once told him, in regard to her own play of perfection in school, people see what they _want_ to see.

(It was probably ironic that the Head of Slytherin had once taken advice on mass manipulation from a Gryffindor, but then, he never had cared about appearances or popularity.)

He used that to his advantage, now.

After all, the most subtle of deceptions are mere suggestions – encouragement to indulge in what one already _knows_ to be true.

The stupid believed what they were told, the arrogant believed they were too clever to be fooled, and the sensible were outnumbered too severely to protest, especially when he named names and managed to talk his way around the most damning of Veritaserum questions.

The art of lying through careful juxtaposition of true facts was, he thought, a sadly undervalued skill.

(No one running the trials would suspect that the brilliant but misanthropic, bitterly sarcastic young Potions Master could restrain his sharp tongue well enough to master the art of the subtle lie of omission, much less the degree of Occlumency needed to subvert the potion's power to lower one's inhibitions and encourage one to tell all.)

It grated to allow them to underestimate him so dearly, but as it worked for him, he did.

When he was finally released, he went back to Hogwarts, kept his head down, thanked the Fates for his now-ancient deal with Skeeter preventing her attaching libelous slander to his name, and let the fickle public of Magical Britain distract itself with juicier news and bigger fish: the political shifts within the DMLE as Crouch was (finally) removed from power; the Light's scramble to find a new Ministerial candidate only a year before the elections; and the fall-out when it came to light that at least twenty sitting Wizengamot Lords or their designated heirs had been 'under the Imperius Curse.'

Severus would be pleased if everyone could just forget his name and his role in the war, but he suspected that if they did (which did not seem terribly likely), it would take a _very_ long time.

At least his recent fame inclined his students to wariness of him. He could use all the help _there_ that he could get: as both Severus and his NEWT students were acutely aware, they had once been students _together_ , even if he had been a sixth-year when they were firsties. Moreover, _they were now that same age_ , and had far less respect for him than they ought, having heard stories in years previous about his war with the Marauders and his friendship with a mudblood Gryffindor.

The Slytherins had _shared a common room_ with him, for fuck's sake, and they held no love for their new Head of House, longing for what they recalled nostalgically as the 'good old days' under Horace Slughorn: i.e., the days when the house had truly been run by the students with the most money and best connections, rather than its nominal head. Most of them had been then-future Death Eaters for the past twenty years, from the days of La Regola d'Belle in the '60s, to Avery, Mulciber and Laetitia Selwyn from Severus' own class, to Regulus Black and Evan Rosier after them. The current seventh-years knew that, of course, as they had been fifteen when the 'good old days' had ended, but they still delighted in calling him a tyrant behind his back for refusing them the same degree of freedom which had encouraged so many Slytherin alumni to follow their student leaders blindly into the Dark Lord's camp. (Less than half of the Death Eaters had been legacy recruits.)

 _Little dick-heads_. (He allowed himself the indulgence of juvenile insults in the privacy of his own thoughts, when appropriate.)

He took a deep breath, centered once again, his emotional upheaval soothed by the litany of mundane irritations and petty problems, by his mental recounting and evaluation of his own situation in the real world – the world he still had to deal with, despite… _everything_.

Focusing on _everything else_ helped him to ignore the books that sat, gathering dust, on top of the highest shelf, and the intrusive thoughts that ambushed him whenever he least expected them, of a girl now dead, and long-since beyond his reach, if, indeed, she ever had been within it.


	11. Keeper of the Underworld

Three long years passed, more quickly, admittedly, than Severus would have suspected, before he realized that he no longer thought of her every day, no longer felt that soul-wrenching stab of pain whenever he was reminded of her (which was still all too often).

It still hurt – he still loved her, and missed her, and would give anything to see her, to speak to her, just once more – but the wound was no longer quite so raw. In the summer after his fifth year of teaching (his third year teaching as a known spy and ex-Death Eater), he decided to move the bulk of his growing collection of books back to Spinner's End, to his father's house, which had been sitting empty since Severus had killed him. It was then that he re-discovered the letter and the journals that Lily had left him.

He was immediately distracted from his work. At first he intended only to sit for a few minutes, read the letter, perhaps skim through the journals and see what sort of information they contained. But as soon as he saw her familiar hand ( _Dear Sev_ ), he could not put them down. He read through the two slim books, cover to cover, and then the letter again.

It had been written only a few days after she had gone into hiding, under the false assumption that the only reason she would be dead and he a free man was if the Dark had won, and much of it was devoted to a plea for him to carry out her vengeance on his now-gone master for the death of her son. It was, he thought, painfully ironic, that he would receive it when she had herself managed to carry out the assigned task (at least as thoroughly as he might have done) and the babe, in any case, lived.

The journals were far more satisfying – and yet torturous, for they reminded him – gave him the sweetest, most tantalizing glimpses of the woman he remembered, now gone forever.

The first was research, interesting thoughts and ideas on rituals and alchemy and healing, as well as the more esoteric soul-magic she had found in Potter's family vault, torn apart, and reassembled into new and terrifying forms. It had clearly been written over the course of several years, possibly begun even before they left school, with no thought to anyone but herself ever reading it, but he knew the cipher-spells she used well enough to decrypt it.

The second was a diary, detailing the last two years of her life – her pregnancy, and the subsequent time in hiding – stories of her daily life, of frustrations and fears, of her hopes and dreams for herself and her child. Some were addressed to him, specifically – unsendable letters, he supposed – and others to Black or Lupin or Pandora Sage-Willow. Those were, he decided, both the best and the worst. It was almost-but-also-not-at-all like having her back, for a single afternoon, catching up on all the time they had missed.

A drop of liquid fell to the last page, marring the parchment, and Severus looked around, confused, for its source before he realized that he was crying. At that, the barriers keeping his emotions in check, weakened substantially by time and memory, dissolved entirely.

He lost himself in times long past, in anger at her (preventable) death and sorrow for the loss of her in his life – he had not known, until she died, that he still harbored some hope that they would, eventually, be on the same side again.

Hadn't she promised him eternity, once upon a time?

He should have found a way, he thought, to save her. That was what it all came down to. He should have done _more_ , somehow.

He fought for objectivity: looking back with the clarity of hindsight, he _knew_ that he had done everything he could have, at the time. He had made the best choices he could, even when 'best' was a relative term, and not at all the same as 'good.' He thought that if he had to do it all again, he would likely make the same choices, which was horrifying, but he knew why he had acted as he did, and the past four years of the trials and coming to terms with his own actions afterward had taught him nothing if not that he _could not_ doubt himself.

His choices, his reasons, had, perhaps, not been justifiable, in the end, when all was said and done and the consequences played out, but they were _understandable._

It was the greatest of ironies that in order to deceive with one's thoughts, to truly _master_ Occlumency, one _could not_ deceive oneself. Understanding and knowing one's own mind was the key to mental control. An inaccurate self-model tainted one's perception of the world, making it impossible to maintain the balance between being and seeming.

(It is also true that an Occlumens cannot lie to himself, even by omission – not if he intends to retain his sanity, for self-deception on such a level is a self-fulfilling prophecy of delusion.)

He had, at one time, known better than to wall off his reactions, refusing to consider them.

That thought, too, like any related to _her_ , to Lily, had been shoved out of the way, his knowledge that he was indulging in a dangerous habit willfully ignored, like the dangers of excessive, obsessive training and smoking and drinking and the potions he had formed possibly a bit more than a casual dependency on in the first year after Azkaban. Not sleeping at all, ever, was far worse, in his mind, than the side-effects of Lemnum Lethaeo – the so-called 'Dreamless Sleep Potion,' – and mood-altering Lethsomala was absolutely necessary if he was to patiently teach children all day, every day – though both required a bevy of other draughts to sustain daily function.

 _No_ , he corrected himself. _I will not allow myself to be distracted_.

He turned his skills upon his own mind, actively examining his feelings for the first time since _that night_.

Pain, anger, sorrow, guilt – his knee-jerk, gut reaction to the news; self-loathing, blame, hatred directed at all those responsible – the feelings accumulated in the time since, as he failed to mourn; confusion and betrayal, underlying all of it, for she had chosen to leave him, he knew, long before she was taken from him. Loss – hopelessness – tingeing it all with grey apathy: that feeling of _what does any of it matter, if she is gone_? Of _there should be more to life than this_. Of _something is missing, and can never be regained._

He acknowledged them all.

Acceptance… that would take far longer, but acknowledgment was a start.

He did not re-build the walls behind which he had hidden them from himself.

Difficult and painful though it was, he found the places they belonged, connected them back to his memory-structure, and left them there. He would come to terms with them eventually (he hoped), much as he had subconsciously come to terms with Lily's death, time inevitably wearing away its sharp edges.

 _Then_ he allowed himself ( _forced_ himself) to examine the self-destructive habits he had developed since the end of the war.

When he finally came back to himself, attending to the world around him, rather than the twisted mess inside his head, the enchanted windows were growing light, and an untouched dinner-tray lay, cold and congealing, on the coffee table.

It was not a decision made, in that moment, so much as a realization of knowledge breaking, like the dawn outside: it was time to move on.

Lily was gone, yes, but he was not.

He could find new meaning in his life, in the raising of Slytherin House and the education of his students, in the continual frustration of Dumbledore, and in improving himself, holding himself ready against the day of the Dark Lord's return.

It would be a process, he knew, actually accepting the emotions he had been repressing, and changing the habits that were slowly driving him into an early grave, but he had taken the first step.

There was no reclaiming his long-gone golden days with Lily; he _had_ to move on.


	12. He Who Observes All

It did not take very long for Dumbledore to notice the change in his Potions Master, beginning with the resumption of classes in the fall of 1985. That was unsurprising to Severus: it would have taken a real idiot not to see that he had turned over a new leaf, and returned to the new term with, if not a bit more bounce to his step, at least with greater snap and vigor, having shaken off the worst effects of his depression and cut back on the potions significantly. If nothing else, the Headmaster _must_ have noticed that he had finally gotten a handle on Slytherin House, and they were well on their way to winning the House Cup for the first time in a decade.

It was, however, rather surprising how long it had taken for the elder wizard to progress from invitations to kindly, grandfatherly chats (an act which might have fooled the students, but certainly didn't fool Severus) and insidious offers of potions-laced sweets (Lemon Soother was harmless enough on its own, but contraindicated with at least two of the potions Severus had been taking for the purposes of self-medication) to outright demands for information (six months) to an attempt to forcibly extract the knowledge he sought from Severus' mind (a year).

If Severus hadn't been so _incredibly furious_ , he might have pitied the old fool. As it was, he simply offered up the information required, nearly drowning the bastard's consciousness in the memory of dealing with his pent-up emotions, whilst simultaneously slipping into the Headmaster's own mind, to see what secrets he might gain in return.

The contact itself was a matter of seconds, though Dumbledore was several minutes in sorting himself out and recovering afterward.

"Severus…" he said, in his best patronizing tone, but Severus cut him off.

"You will _stay out of my head_ , you paranoid, delusional _fuck_ ," he hissed, lurching to his feet, angry nearly beyond words at the intrusion. The old man went positively grey on receiving a second migraine-inducing wave of rage, betrayal, and violation – a sure sign that he was still using casual legilimency to pick up stray thoughts around him, as Severus had not infiltrated his mind to deliver it, but simply projected it openly. He had had his suspicions for some time, but this just proved that Dumbledore was no better than the Dark Lord. "Did you _really_ think that I would not notice your intrusion? Could you not simply take me at my word when I told you that I was finally coming to terms with my grief and the end of the War? My improved mental state has _nothing_ , I _assure you_ , to do with the imminent return of the Dark Lord to power!"

He barred his still-faded Dark Mark for the bastard before him.

Dumbledore tried to speak again: "My dear boy –"

"I am not your dear anything, old man, and we both know it – I am a tool: a useful indicator of the Dark Lord's status, and a spy against his return. I serve you only because the vow I made demands it, not because I desire it, and certainly not on the strength of any friendship between us, so cut the dragon-shite, and _listen to me_! I gave you what you wanted this time; next time, I will fight you with every fibre of my being, and if we both survive the confrontation with our consciousness intact, you can expect my resignation on your desk by sunrise!"

He whirled on his heel and was gone before the old fucker could formulate a response.

That was eighteen months before, and now he was considering whether it had been a good thing or not, that brief look he had gotten behind Dumbledore's falsely innocent blue eyes, because the few hints he had seen, well… it had been temptation incarnate, and he had not been able to resist the urge to seek out more, to know all that the Old Goat had known about the war and how it had ended.

Unlike Dumbledore, Severus' legilimency skills truly were undetectable, when he had the time and the incentive to make them so. He did not doubt that the Dark Lord would have been better, had he chosen to exercise subtlety, but he preferred that his victims know and fear him. Dumbledore, however, had no gift for the subject, and his practice of it was akin to the speech of one who has learned a language by rote. Passable, but not fluent.

The trick, though both his masters, he was sure, would scorn to hear, was empathy. Understanding. Not unlike Occlumency, truly, though focused outward, rather than in, the skill of making one's mind, or the part of one's mind which would come into contact with the Other, become not a mirror of the Other, but something so similar to it that the Other accepted it without question.

Dumbledore's memories were fire, his thoughts lightning, restrained by smooth, impermeable glass and thick blast doors; disciplined, somewhat, by age and defensive from years of war and politics, but at its heart a quick and shifting thing, hobbled by his own fears and choices.

Severus' was quite dissimilar by habit: icy ocean depths and the currents and creatures within them. But a visualization was only a model, not the truth of a thing, and he had always had a talent for adapting to the situation at hand. It was not so difficult to mimic the Headmaster's thought processes and patterns to gain access to his memories, closely-guarded or not.

It had taken him some time (and very careful probing, without even eye-contact to sustain the connection) to find the memories of interest (rather than the deep, dark secret that Dumbledore had once been seduced by Gellert Grindelwald (literally) and his Vision (figuratively), and had won their famous duel when the Dark Lord of Europe hesitated to cast the killing blow upon his former lover; the fact that he truly _didn't know_ whether he was responsible for his sister's death; the root of his ongoing, (extremely petty) academic feud with John McKinnon; or the real reason he had switched his focus from Alchemy to Transfiguration (not that Severus blamed him – Bio-Alchemy was a nasty discipline, and not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach)). Still, after months of cautious memory-delving, he had found the secrets he sought.

Now he knew that Lily's son (and _Potter's_ ) had been dumped on Petunia Evans' doorstep, with only a letter of explanation. Now he knew that the Light truly had been losing, at the end – if Bellatrix had been able to hold the Dark Lord together for just six more months, the Order would have been crushed, entirely. Now he knew the full contents of the Prophecy, that neither could live while the other survived, and how vague it was, and how, perhaps, when it was given, there was so little to indicate Lily's child.

He could see, now, how his two masters, thinking to play each other, rather than the game, had managed to make the worst possible choices at every turn – well, the worst in Severus' view, for they had led to Lily's death, and certainly the Dark Lord's, for he was now decidedly not alive, even if he was not entirely gone.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, seemed rather pleased with the outcome of his little plan.

He had not known, when he advised Lily and Potter to go into hiding, that he was setting them up as a target, _the_ target, but he had been glad to see Lily out of the field (too ruthless, he thought her – if only he knew…) and he had not cared that she had died, or James, not when the Wizengamot voted their infant son into his care, a savior to raise up against the Dark Lord's return.

Not that he would do so himself – oh, no. He wanted the boy raised with an appreciation of muggles, safe behind blood wards, knowing _love_ and _family_ , away from the fame that would surely follow him once he entered the magical world.

No, Dumbledore might not have planned every step and every outcome, but he had benefitted, in the War and in politics afterward.

Worst of all, Severus realized, Lily had already been "safe" – protected as well as Dumbledore could manage – when Severus had pledged his loyalty to the old man. Severus had vowed, on his honor, his magic, and his life to abide by Dumbledore's will until the Dark Lord was dead, or Severus was. He had made his vow – enslaved himself a second time – on the condition that _Lily would be kept safe_ , tricked into paying for a service already rendered – for it was the very fact of her going into hiding that had made the Dark Lord believe her child to be the Chosen One.

For _that_ , Severus would never forgive him.

Any faith he might have had in the Light had been lost when Dumbledore had failed and Lily had died, though the Vow had not broken (the most convincing sign that the Dark Lord was not yet truly dead). Severus had remained at his new master's side for a lack of anything better to do with his life, and for protection, and because he was, at the heart of things, a man of his word: he had traded his service for her protection, and if, in the end, it had failed, that was the fault of Pettigrew (though he had no problem seeing Black in Azkaban regardless) and the Dark Lord, and even himself, for delivering the prophecy, or so he had thought.

Pettigrew was dead and the Dark Lord nearly so, and continuing to serve Dumbledore, as a teacher rather than a spy, had to count as some sort of penance on his part.

Now, though, as he saw it, he had given his oath under false pretenses, and owed the old man nothing for that initial vow.

Oh, it still bound him, magically speaking, but he felt no ill at the thought of arranging a convenient death, of preventing the old man giving him any more orders against said vow. To do so would go against its spirit, certainly, but not the letter of it, and that was the important thing.

His own protection (which should persist, should Dumbledore die without renouncing him, given his years of good behavior) was paid for by the promise to protect the child, which he would still do, but with Dumbledore gone, Severus would be free – or as free as he could possibly be, given the circumstances.

 _Yes,_ he promised himself. _Someday Albus Dumbledore will die, and by my hand._

Not today, not soon, but someday, when he was well-prepared, and satisfied that any ill intent would not be traced back to him. It was only a matter of time.


	13. Invisible but Essential

In the three years since Severus had discovered the full circumstances and terms of his "employment," the relationship between himself and the Headmaster had deteriorated considerably, though he doubted Dumbledore saw it so. Indeed, Severus had gone out of his way to make himself indispensable to the old man, over the years, while simultaneously portraying himself as exactly the sort of person the Headmaster expected him to be – at least when the old man was around to see.

Within the walls of Hogwarts, in his position as Dumbledore's Potions Instructor, he was a bitter, caustic, hateful man, occasionally bordering on cruel to his students, unable to move on from his time as a student, forever mourning his lost love. He was sharp-edged and sarcastic, and had higher standards than any other professor in the school. He was incapable of doing less than what he considered to be an adequate job, regardless of how little he cared for the tasks he was assigned and he held himself to the same high standards he insisted upon for others, so his marking was always scrupulously fair, even if his point-taking wasn't, and he played no favorites (though he did have _least_ favorites, and everyone knew who they were). He hated his job, would much rather prefer to retire from teaching altogether, or else teach Defense (which amounted to the same thing after about a year), and had no tolerance for the lazy and slow-witted. Most of the school hated his class, but nobody had yet died or managed to permanently maim themselves in a potions accident during his tenure, which was far more important than his popularity.

As the Head of Slytherin, his students knew him as a strict disciplinarian (not unlike many of their parents, but with more reasonable expectations for the most part). He argued that it was the epitome of _Slytherin-ness_ for his Snakes to develop not only the virtues of their own house, but also to appropriate the cooperative skills of Hufflepuff, the questioning nature of Ravenclaw, and, yes, even the decisiveness of Gryffindor (to be applied sparingly, as needed). He treated them like very short adults, encouraged them to think for themselves, and demanded strict adherence to the policies of House Governance which had fallen into neglect over Slughorn's tenure as Head of the House. He insisted that Quidditch and the Prefecture were to be meritocracies, and gave solid, Slytherin reasons for his decisions (mostly allowing students to excel individually and as a House, and encouraging independence through self-regulation). He even occasionally (and very discretely) advised on home-life problems, or offered protective spells and healing potions and mind healing to those who needed them.

Of course, Dumbledore only noted that Slytherin, once a hotbed of plotting and scheming and dark magic – prime recruiting-grounds for Death Eaters and major source of disruption within the school – seemed to be more or less under control, now, which, along with the low casualty rate in his lessons, more than made up for Severus' propensity for making Hufflepuffs cry and taking points from Gryffindors for the most minor classroom infractions. Not to mention the fact that, as the only faculty member actually bound to do Dumbledore's will, he was the easiest one to delegate to when it came to solving the more… esoteric 'problems' which seemed to plague the school on a semi-regular basis, from students beta-testing time-turners for the Department of Mysteries to resolving whatever malign mischief the Defense Professor of the Year had instigated. Thankfully, Severus thought, he was quite good at problem-solving. Both he and Dumbledore knew that he would never have been allowed to resign, even if they hadn't been awaiting any sign of the return of the Dark Lord.

Severus, at least was not only waiting, but actively _planning_ for that day. He kept his skills as a spy sharp, plotting, manipulating, and gathering information against the entirety of his House at once ("control" was a relative term, in Slytherin) and keeping his true feelings about his arrangement with Dumbledore hidden from the old man and his colleagues. He kept his fighting abilities in top form, and continued to research in his chosen fields, regardless of the potential illegality of his studies. He deliberately built a reputation for himself outside of 'Death Eater' and 'Dumbledore's Spy' by consulting for St. Mungo's when they had a case requiring a potions master with mind-magic or Dark Arts experience, publishing in international potions journals often enough to maintain some relevance in the field, and keeping up a correspondence with the top three Mind Mages in Magical Britain, removing his dependency on the Headmaster for legitimacy. Should the opportunity arise to kill the Old Goat before the Dark Lord returned, Severus was certain he would not suffer to do so.

The one thing he had not managed to do over the course of the ten years' 'peace' he had been afforded was to come to terms with the existence of Harry Potter, and his feelings toward the boy.

 _Conflicted_ was an understatement.

He wanted to care for the boy, for Lily's sake.

But he could not help but hate the child for his protection having been the immediate impetus for her death.

No more, of course, than he hated himself or Dumbledore or the Dark Lord, and quite a lot less than he hated Peter Pettigrew, but the fact remained: Lily had chosen to make her final stand for the child. If he had never existed… well, she might not have survived the end of the war, but then again, she might have. She had been fierce and bright and strong… and she had been hampered by trying to protect her son, and had neglected to protect herself. If Dumbledore was right, she hadn't even fought back, that night, sacrificing herself willingly to protect the babe.

This was complicated by the impressions he gathered once he had actually seen the child in person.

It did not help that the boy was the spitting image of James Potter, albeit somewhat smaller and scrawnier than his one-time nemesis had been. (Though that might have been a matter of perspective.)

On the other hand, however, it was clear that, regardless of Dumbledore's reassurances, the boy had not been so well-cared-for as Severus had been led to believe. He had expected the child to show up turned out like the Malfoy heir, in bespoke robes, with well-tailored slacks and hand-made shoes beneath them, not too-large, hand-me-down muggle trousers and ratty trainers.

It appeared that Petunia had managed to give him a childhood more in line with the Evans girls' than James Potter's, at least on a scale of wealth. And he did not miss the boy's awe on experiencing Hogwarts, or his terror going under the Hat, or his rather reticent engagement with the other students in meals, all of which suggested that, somehow, against all the odds, she had managed to instill in him a sense of humility.

He wanted to give the boy a chance, he had realized, whilst probing at Quirrell's summer exploits over that first dinner. He just wasn't sure he wanted it enough to actually _do_ it, especially as the child managed to get himself sorted into Gryffindor, which spoke volumes of the underlying personality flaws he suspected were not eliminated, but only masked by the effects of a muggle childhood. After all, he _was_ a Potter.

Severus had not managed to come to a decision in regards to how he ought to treat the boy before their first lesson together, and had fallen back on his usual nasty attitude toward Gryffindors by habit. The first question was one he asked routinely, his yearly confession, made publically, if cryptically, and only to a group of students who would not possibly understand: asphodel and wormwood; regret unto death for the loss of the only person he thought he had ever truly loved.

If he had not given it to Potter, he would have given the question to the Weasley, or perhaps the Dunbar girl. But Potter, the one child whom he would actually have approved of correctly interpreting the statement behind it hadn't managed to formulate an answer even to the surface inquiry, and then when he had given the thankless boy a second chance, and a third, he had responded with sullen insolence and impertinent smartarsery (which Severus could not and would not abide in his classroom). This had confirmed that, as he had feared, no matter how well-behaved the child might seem amongst his peers, when confronted with authority or any hint of challenge to his pride, this Potter had the same tendency toward insufferable arrogance and entitlement as his father before him.

After that, and with the way the rest of the staff seemed to be going out of their way to fawn over Perfect Potter's Death-Defying Miracle Spawn it had been only too easy to slip into character for Dumbledore, showing him and the rest of the staff the face of the bitter Potions Instructor and half of the truth: his hatred of the child for the sins of his long-dead father and his mother's sacrifice on his behalf.

Only a few weeks into the school year, Severus had denounced the boy several times, publically and privately, as a mediocre student (though he was actually quite good for a child who had never seen a cauldron in the first eleven years of his life), as arrogant, impertinent, and attention-seeking (though little enough of that was necessary given the degree of fascination his fellow students had for him, especially after the whole incident with his being drafted to the Gryffindor Quidditch team). He had even thrown in the occasional jab at his father's rule-breaking (though the gods and Powers knew he and Lily had broken just as many rules in their respective Hogwarts careers – they had just been better at not getting caught). He doubted whether his outburst in the staff room had actually tempered his colleagues' ridiculous praise in the least, but it had, at least, encouraged them to stop rhapsodizing over the boy in his presence.

And then, before he had truly recognized what was happening, it was an established part of his persona, that he hated the Boy Who Lived. Dumbledore vacillated between believing his feelings to be due to his enmity with Potter Senior, the loss of Lily, and even, on the rare occasion where he showed true concern for the boy, thinking that he was simply maintaining his cover, which was vaguely amusing at times, but mostly frustrating.

He knew it was his own fault that his employer saw him as such a shallow, two-dimensional character, but he still dearly wished that he knew someone – _anyone_ – who could and would recognize that there was more to life in general (and his life in particular) than the obvious.

(It was times like this he really missed Lily.)


	14. The Second Act

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* * *

III. The Second Act

* * *

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	15. Thirty-Two - 1992

Dumbledore sighed heavily, sinking into the chair behind his desk as though he felt every day of his ridiculously advanced years tonight. "Quirinus is dead, Severus."

"Good," Severus responded absently, more concerned with his thoughts at the moment than the fate of the latest Defense Professor – and especially one which had caused him so much irritation over the year. Harry Potter was in hospital _again_ , having meddled in affairs that did not concern him, and Severus, who had guarded him faithfully all year, despite much temptation to simply let Quirrell have his way with the boy as the idiot children constructed their naïve theory that _he_ was, in fact, the one intending to steal the Philosopher's Stone.

" _Severus…"_

"Well what do you _expect_ me to say?" he snapped. "How did he die?"

The Headmaster twinkled; Severus glared at him, daring him to attempt his wordless, wandless legilimency trick. "I daresay the blood wards have had their use, after all, my dear boy."

"Don't patronize me, and stop being cryptic!"

Dumbledore sighed, shaking his head, as though in denial of Severus' accusations before he admitted: "Harry's touch was anathema to Quirrell, possessed as he was…"

" _Possessed?_ Did _you_ exorcise him?" _Without me_ went unsaid. Not that he _minded_ not having been more thoroughly involved in yet another Hogwarts Emergency _,_ but it was extremely out of character for Dumbledore to have taken care of the problem himself, when he could have forced Severus to do it.

"No, my lad – as his host was destroyed, the possessing spirit abandoned his body voluntarily. I merely performed the devocation to banish it."

"But – _damn it_ , Dumbledore – you let it _escape_?!"

The old man nodded gravely. "I did not have the means to capture it in the moment, but… that is not important. Severus, I fear…" Severus nearly growled at the dramatic suspense. "I fear that this is the sign we have been waiting for."

" _What. Do. You. Mean_ 'the sign we have been waiting for'?" the younger wizard ground out.

"Severus… I believe that Quirinus was possessed by what remains of the former Lord Voldemort." Severus might have been imagining it, but he thought there was a quaver in the Old Goat's voice.

 _Oh, and in that case, his escape is of no consequence? Bloody fool!_ "How do you know?" he asked evenly. That Quirrell had been somehow serving the Dark had been established early in the year, but part of the reason he had been so irritating had been his persistent ability to avoid revealing his master to Severus.

"I have spoken to Miss Granger," the headmaster said with a sigh. "And the centaurs, after hearing her account. They claim that Mars has been growing unusually bright these past months. War is returning to Magical Britain, Severus."

"We – we are not ready, yet," Severus objected without thinking. _He_ wasn't ready yet. _Curse them both to hell and back!_ He still didn't even know how the Dark Lord had achieved immortality in the first place, let alone how to defeat that method and destroy him once and for all! "We must prepare…"

Dumbledore bestowed upon him a dazzling grin. "Never fear, Severus – we shall have time – he does not yet have another body, he has just lost his only servant, and now we know that he is active again… I should think that we have a year or two at least, before he gathers sufficient strength to make another attempt at resurrecting himself."

" _A year or two_ , Dumbledore? We have had _ten_ years, and look at the progress we have made! Negligible!" There were simply _too many_ methods by which the Dark Lord might have contrived to sustain himself without a physical body, and no way to predict which he might have used.

"Ah, but think, Severus! The _prophecy_ …"

"The – the _prophecy_?!" he repeated, drawling disbelief in his tone. "You think – what? That Harry Potter will manage to grow up enough in the next _year or two_ to defeat the Dark Lord? Are you _mad_? He is a _child_! He is – and I say this with no bias at all – _not_ the sort of magical protégé who has that degree of potential! Not to _mention_ , I do not see him receiving any training which might allow him to –"

"Severus, Severus, Severus… what is this? Do you truly care for the boy?" Dumbledore chortled, cutting him off.

"I care for his success or failure, as you well know! I care for the death of the Dark Lord! I _vowed_ to keep Potter _safe_ , and that does _not_ entail setting him against the Dark Lord with no training, no understanding, even, of the situation, or why his role is _important_ – _especially_ as that thrice-cursed _prophecy_ may well already have been fulfilled!"

"I am afraid it has not, Severus," the old wizard shook his white head slowly. "And regardless, the Dark Lord likely will not forgive his downfall at the hands of an infant. Harry will be hunted by him, prophecy or no."

"So why is he allowed to muddle along in classes with his yearmates, getting into trouble and wasting precious time, rather than learning to protect himself, Dumbledore? One would think you _want_ him to be slaughtered when the Dark Lord finally does return!"

" _Of course not_!" The serene expression that normally graced the Headmaster's features was nowhere to be seen. "But you _must_ see, Severus, with a year or two, or even if Voldemort can be held off until Harry achieves his majority, no amount of training we can give him could possibly stand up to fifty years' intensive study of the darkest magics… but the prophecy specified that he would have power the Dark Lord knew not… I fear that to tell him now, to push him to pursue power would only force him to become more similar to Voldemort. If he is to have any chance – any chance at all – we must preserve his innocence – his ability to love, his kindness, his –"

 _"Spare me_ the bloody _sentiment_ , old man," Severus snapped. "You would have us pin our hopes and the boy's safety on the power of _doing nothing_? I do believe you have finally lost your mind entirely."

Dumbledore gave him a superior smile. "I would think that you, Severus, of all people, would be the _last_ to dismiss the power of love – if not that, what else was it that prompted you to defect to my side in the first place?"

Severus stood abruptly. "This meeting is over," he informed his nominal superior, and turned on his heel, headed for the door.

"But the conversation is not," the old man replied, just as the door closed behind Severus, deftly stealing the last word. _Fucker_. The worst part was, he was right. The topic _would_ come up again eventually, especially if Dumbledore was determined to see through this 'Power of Love' strategy. Dark Powers, someone truly needed to inform him that the 1960s were over.

Personally, Severus thought that there was some merit in the strategy of fighting fire with fire – aurors, healers, and cursebreakers studied the Dark Arts in their efforts to learn how best to counter them, after all. But even he would admit that the old man was probably right, at least insofar as he could not hope to teach Potter enough to become a threat to the Dark Lord no matter how much time he was given.

Potter senior had been admittedly… not terrible, at conventional offensive magics, but he had never been in the same weight-class as the Dark Lord, figuratively speaking. Lily had been more effective against him, but her approach to magic had always been even more instinctual than his own, despite the fact that she seemed to think in ways which made it easier for her to understand the mathematical modeling of magic. Her usual method was half intuition, half improvisation, and at least three-quarters experimentation held together by blind faith in herself and Magic, and a habit of not acknowledging the inconsistencies and the reasons a spell _shouldn't_ work. She relied on rituals and healing charms, her control and inventiveness excellent, but her strength leaving much to be desired. The younger Potter, by contrast, was more like his father, and likely to be just as effective as him when faced with the Dark Lord.

Severus despaired: he did not see that there was anything, truly, that he could do to help the boy directly, unless it was by finding some way to circumvent his vow and share information he had been ordered not to divulge – or perhaps more dramatically, information he had not yet admitted to knowing, such as the contents of the blasted prophecy. Perhaps if he had already established a degree of rapport with the child, he might bother, but as things were, he doubted whether he would be believed, and he could not imagine what gain there would be, anyway.

It was not as though Potter would be able to _do_ anything with any information he received.

The biggest disappointment, he thought, about Harry Potter, wasn't his arrogance or impertinence, or the way Gryffindor had brought out his tendency for taking problems into his own hands, or his penchant for falling into trouble any time Severus turned his back for five minutes. It was the way the boy was so utterly _uncritical_ of everything around him.

He was… _lazy_ , following the youngest Weasley in indulging in boyish pleasures and pastimes, electing to play Quidditch rather than study and excel at magic, or learn more about the new world he had just discovered.

He had no _ambition_ , unless it was to be unexceptional in every possible way.

He, along with his little Gryffindor friends, had consistently managed to draw the wrong conclusions about everything all year, up to and including the fact that Quirrell, not Severus, had been trying to steal the stone and possibly kill the Boy Who Lived. Not that Severus had intended for them to uncover the truth of his position, but he was fairly certain from Potter's reaction when he had banned the children from the Castle earlier in the day that the boy was legitimately convinced that Severus had been attempting to murder him all year, rather than guarding his life, which took a very… _special_ brand of emotionally motivated illogic, so far as he was concerned.

Severus could not, he was sure, teach someone like _that_ anything, let alone self-defense, nor could he trust such a dunderhead to consider the consequences of sharing or acting on any secrets Severus might share with him.

Nine hells, he would consider himself accomplished if he could convince the idiot child, somehow, to stop running headlong into danger without a single thought for his own safety or that of his friends, let alone any plans in motion that his interference could very well muck up.

No, there was nothing he could do at the moment to make the boy more capable or give him an edge, save keeping an eye on him discretely.

Protecting Harry Potter was, he reflected, turning out to be a much more difficult assignment than Severus had expected when he shouldered the burden.


	16. Thirty-Three - 1993

Severus fell to his knees before the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, all concerns for the Weasley girl (no thought given by the Headmaster to the effects of her possession off and on over the course of the year, of course, or how to deal with the repercussions of her actions while possessed) and Potter (wandering, clearly in shock, into the Feast covered in ink, muck, and what had to have been his own blood, surrounded by his admiring peers before Severus could tell Minerva to extract him), all amusement at the thought of Lockhart erasing his own memory with Weasley's faulty wand (had Minerva and Filius not informed his parents of his poor performance all year?), and the awe he felt at being, perhaps, the first Head of Slytherin to set foot in the Chamber of Secrets since the great man himself, were driven from his mind by the sight of the enormous snake laid out before him, sixty feet long if it was an inch, its still-gaping maw filled with sharply curved fangs, its deadly eyes shattered and ruined.

He approached it slowly, hardly daring to believe that the boy had killed this most deadly of serpents.

It took him some time to locate the cause of death – the single stab wound through the roof of the mouth – and in the course of his inspection, he discovered something the Headmaster hadn't mentioned, in recounting Potter's fantastic tale: one of the fangs was broken. It lay at the base of a nearby pillar, in a now-dry puddle of blood and ink, horrifying evidence that Potter had not, in fact, escaped the beast unscathed.

Severus shuddered to think how close the child must have come to death – only Fawkes' immediate presence could possibly have saved him, he knew.

All year, he had been preoccupied trying to catch the Heir of Slytherin or his monster. He had been pleased that, aside from the issue of the Polyjuice Potion, which, after seeing Granger in hospital and discovering that Crabbe and Goyle had been waylaid over Christmas and had their clothes stolen, he was certain Potter had also partaken of and the startling revelation of Potter's… unusual linguistic abilities, the trio of second-year Gryffindor troublemakers seemed to have kept their heads down, for the most part.

He had thought that Potter was _safe_ , damn it!

And then he had up and walked into the Chamber of Secrets to do battle with a creature out of legend, been _bitten by a basilisk_ , and somehow walked away afterward to tell the tale, with not even a visit to the hospital wing or a quick freshening up before traipsing off to mingle with his admiring public.

Severus would ask himself what the Headmaster had been thinking, but he feared he already knew – the boy had, for the first time, had a taste of what it meant to be a _hero_ , and Dumbledore was determined to reinforce such behavior, come hell or high water. Why _not_ throw a Triumph at two in the morning for a boy who truly should have been in bed? Why _not_ give Gryffindor four-hundred house points, completely disregarding the fact that no other house had had more than four-hundred points to begin with, handing them the Cup for the second year in a row? Why _not_ cancel exams for the entire school, for no bloody reason at all, save to enhance the celebratory atmosphere of the late-night party?

He was turning the school into a bloody _joke_ in his efforts to turn Harry Potter into a hero in truth, as well as in the popular mind. It was _sickening_ , the extent to which he had twisted what should be an educational institution to focus on a single boy who was, so far as Severus could see, greatly enjoying its positive attentions after suffering the notoriety of being outed as a Parselmouth. And it was _horrifying_ , because, aside from the issue of the appropriateness of disrupting the entire school system to boost a single child's already-significant ego, he feared it was _working_. Potter was only becoming more reckless, risking his life more directly, and running off to go rescue the girl like he was living in a gods-cursed _fairy tale_!

How the ever-loving _fuck_ was Severus supposed to _protect_ the boy when _Dumbledore_ was _actively encouraging_ behavior like being _bitten_ by a fucking _basilisk_?!

 _Have some phoenix tears and walk it off, my dear boy_ , he thought mockingly. _It's only a_ little _brush with Death!_

Rather abruptly, Severus realized that he was no longer nearly as enthusiastic about exploring the Chamber of Secrets and dissecting the basilisk – the true reason he had come down here – as he had been only minutes before. His hands began to work automatically, unpacking equipment and supplies, harvesting the venom and the tongue, but he truly wanted nothing more than to return to his quarters and have a good, stiff drink. He made his way toward the tail, removing the heart, thyroid, adrenals, and ovaries, and the all-important thaumos – the organ that transformed latent magical energy into life-sustaining sugars – storing each of them in neutral, preservative potions as he went.

He could _feel_ the magic radiating off the corpse, and a few quick spells confirmed his suspicion that the flesh was resistant to fire, and he doubted whether simple boiling would strip the bones. Creating a potion to do the work might be interesting, but would almost certainly be a waste of time and resources: it would likely involve the snake's own venom, and that was worth far more than the bones themselves.

He didn't really mind – extracting the skeleton would have been the most difficult and time-consuming part of the process, regardless, and he didn't particularly want to remain in the Chamber any longer.

He did take the time when he was done to roll the snake over, though, so that the incisions he had made were not immediately visible. The magic in the corpse would preserve it for decades, he suspected, and such a magnificent (albeit terrifying) creature deserved better than to be left lying, cut open, like rubbish, even if its most potent parts had been looted. (It was a shame the phoenix had destroyed the eyes.)

He left the stain of Potter's blood and the ink from the diary (cursing Dumbledore for allowing the boy to return it to Lucius, who had doubtless destroyed it with fiendfire by now, when Severus truly would have appreciated the opportunity to examine it more closely), but, at the last moment, before he turned to begin his heavily-laden journey back up to the school, he decided to take the broken fang.

It would, he thought, remind him… It would remind him that no matter how much he did to protect the boy, no matter how much he _wanted_ to fulfil the vow he had made to keep Lily's child safe, he might still fail: some things were, truly, impossible to anticipate, and… he would do well to keep that in mind.

Just in case.

Especially since Potter seemed to have a death wish, in addition to a budding hero complex. Idiot child.


	17. Thirty-Four - 1994

"Unless you are suggesting that Harry and Hermione are able to be in two places at once, I'm afraid I don't see any point in troubling them any further," Dumbledore said calmly, eyes twinkling with mirth at the combination of Severus' overacting and his genuine fury as he realized what _must_ have happened.

The time turner.

They had used Granger's time turner to save Black.

Black, he had thought, had only ever done one thing right in his life, killing Peter _Fucking_ Pettigrew – the worthless worm who had betrayed Lily to the Dark Lord – and now he learned that the murderous cunt hadn't even managed _that_ , on a night when he had been knocked out by three of his least-favorite students whilst legitimately trying to protect them from their own stupidity.

He had already been _plenty_ angry, and channeling most of it into his portrayal of the rage expected of the short-tempered Potions Instructor, but on hearing Dumbledore's taunting, superior tone, he very nearly lost it entirely.

He didn't really think anyone would blame him, after the night he'd had.

 _Fuck you, you fucking cunt-licking arsehole of the first powers-bedamned order!_ he raged silently, fighting the urge to break into the old man's mind and assault him with all the reasons the little stunt he had just pulled was _not okay_.

Sirius Black _deserved_ to be in Azkaban, if not for Pettigrew's murder (quite honestly, Severus thought that the man deserved to be thrown to the dementors for _failing_ to kill Pettigrew more than he would have done if he had managed to exterminate the beastly little worm), then at _least_ for his attempted murder of Severus himself, long before they were actually at war!

But _no_. The Headmaster's one-time golden boy had, apparently, on Dumbledore's orders, been sprung from custody just like his cowardly little friend.

There was no justice in this world.

 _None_!

With a _supreme_ effort of self-control – nothing he had done in the war had been half so difficult as holding himself back, at that moment – Severus turned away and swept from the room.

Let someone else deal with the insufferable children tonight.

He had done his part, attempting to interrupt their meeting with the deranged Black and miserable fucking _moron_ Lupin – he would have been more pleased to be proven right about the werewolf who allegedly _forgot_ to take his potion before haring off to endanger students he _claimed_ to be fond of if one of them hadn't been the boy Severus was sworn to protect – and bringing them back to the castle when he regained consciousness out on the grounds only to find all three of his treacherous attackers passed out due to dementor exposure.

If Dumbledore wanted to let the boy associate with madmen and werewolves and go haring off through time to break an attempted murderer out of ministry custody, then _he_ could deal with the consequences. Severus was _done_.

He was going to… well, probably get pissed, or set something on fire. He hadn't decided yet. But he couldn't be around Dumbledore _or_ Potter and his little friends, at the moment, lest he be tempted to murder the old man and do a bit of time travelling himself to finish the job Black had failed to do – still-fading concussion, the inevitable time sickness, and the dangers of temporal instability notwithstanding!

(The last reason alone was enough to ensure that he would not attempt to meddle with a period of time and an unfamiliar sequence of events that already had one time-turner in play, but by all the Powers, he wished that the old man had told the children to try to capture Pettigrew, rather than freeing Black…)

It was nights like this when he remembered why he had hadn't entirely hated becoming a Death Eater in the first place. The blackmail and torture he could have done without, but there was something to be said for having the power to take your rage out on the world whenever you liked.


	18. Thirty-Five - 1995

_"My Lord, I am and always will be loyal to you! Until death and beyond! I swore it!"_

 _"You did not return when you felt the Mark!_ Crucio! _"_

 _Severus knew he fell to the ground under the effects of the curse, though he could not feel the impact in the overwhelming sensation of every nerve already firing, his body on fire, his mind just barely functioning well enough to maintain the proper persona as the Dark Lord ripped into his consciousness, deliberately making the legilimency as painful as possible._

Severus, stumbling through the gates of Hogwarts to fall to the ground just inside the wards – _safe_ – never thought that he would be pleased to have fallen into the part of 'hating' Harry Potter, but it was probably that which had saved his life tonight.

 _The curse stopped abruptly, and he became aware that the Dark Lord was laughing, a high, cruel, merciless sound – joy derived from the pain of others. "I see you are still loyal, my servant – perhaps the_ most _loyal… you have held your position with Dumbledore, yes, and I had mistrusted you for that, but now I see… you hate the boy, do you not?_ Crucio! _Answer me when I speak to you, Severus! You hate the boy, do you not?"_

 _"Y-yess, M-m-m'lord," Severus groaned, the after-effects of the spell causing his tongue and lips to falter._

That was a lie, he reminded himself, desperately attempting to sort out his mind before he passed out – he hated waking up confused, between personas, lost within his own very convincing half-truths. _I_ don't hate him. The Potions Instructor hates him. The Death Eater hates him. _I_ despair of him. I think him a near-helpless child, despite all the times he has managed to survive near-certain death since coming to Hogwarts, and I hate how he is like James, and so little like Lily – but enough that he reminds me of her, that I cannot forget that he is not only a Potter.

 _"Indeed… I thought so. You hate the child nearly as much as you hate the old man… it is his fault, after all, that I was forced to kill his mother… but I see you serve me now because there is no other choice, because you have no one else to follow, with the Light wrapped around his juvenile finger… This is_ unacceptable _, Severus!_ Crucio _!" he cast again._

 _When Severus was released from it, he realized that other damage had been dealt while he was under – the pain didn't fade from his back – a lashing curse, perhaps – and one of his arms –_ broken _, he thought distantly. He would not be able to use his wand, even if he dared to try._

 _"What have you to say for yourself, Severus?" the Dark Lord demanded._

 _What have you to say for yourself_ echoed in his half-conscious thoughts, warring with the sensation of lingering pain, cool grass against his face, and the scent of earth still warm from the day's sun. _What have you to say for yourself?_

Nothing.

He had nothing.

He was spent, and the war was only just beginning again.

 _He forced himself back to his knees. "N-n… m-m'rd. L-loyl. Al-al-ways. Y-y-y-yrs. F-for-forever. T-th Cause. D-Dark Ref-Revo-lu-lu-tion."_

 _"Shut up, Severus," the Dark Lord allowed him. Severus subsided gratefully, letting the twitches of misfiring nerves work their way through him as the Dark Lord lapsed into a considering silence. After a time he spoke again. "Most of my servants, those who are still here, and not in Azkaban, have done well for themselves, these past thirteen years. They denied me. They denied our aims, our mission, our Cause to save their own skins. You… you did not._

 _"The whole world seems to be convinced that Severus Snape is on_ their _side, no matter who they are – quite an accomplishment, my young spy…_

 _"But I know you. You could have done so much… potential, ambition… and yet you remained where I had sent you, to Hogwarts, at Dumbledore's side. You saved yourself, yes, but you never denounced me or our cause… and you are still in a position to be_ useful _…_

 _"Tell me, though – did you truly think that I would prefer you remain in place as a spy, rather than attend to me and assist in my resurrection? What reason can you give me for your failure to come to me, to aid me?"_

 _"W-why did y-you n-not c-come to m-me wh-when you were p-p-pos-sessing Q-Quirrell? Ha-had I b-but known…"_

 _He was hit with another crucio for his impertinence, and felt his bowels finally loosen. Had he any pride left, he would have flushed with shame._

 _"Why did you not seek me out, Severus? I will not ask again!"_

 _"Kn-kn-knew y-you w-w-would r-re-turn, m-m-m'lord. M-mark. N-not g-gone. L-leaving D-dumb-dumble-dumb… Azzz-kaban. M-more u-useful f-f-free… Al-also… p-per-personal p-pref-fer-ferance," he admitted after a moment. "Hate d-d-ment'rs, m-m'lord."_

 _Whether it was the stark honesty of his statement or the fact that 'Dumbledumb' amused him, the Dark Lord considered his words carefully. "I think," he said, after several minutes. "Severus, that I might believe you."_

Severus' heart had nearly stopped. It had been a close thing, forcing himself not to show any hint of triumph along with his relief and gratitude – relief was acceptable, to have been judged and not found wanting. Gratitude was always welcome, stoking the bastard's ego. Triumph, however, spoke of self-service and having gotten one over on him, and would surely have resulted in more torture, if not his immediate execution.

 _"Tell me, Severus, why have you not acted against Potter in all the time you have had access to him? Why does he still live, when he lies, thinking himself safe, within your reach?"_

Because to kill him would be suicide, _he thought. "A-a s-spy'ss r-role is – is n-not-t-t to a-act. B-but t-to ob-ob-serve. M-m'lord," he said._

 _Because I do not want to kill him_ , was the truth, he knew.

 _The Dark Lord had laughed again. "Very good, Severus. Very good… I see you still recall your place, after all. I shall give you a chance to re-earn my trust. Go. Return to the Old Goat. I shall summon you after the end of the school year. Be prepared to attend and report on the information you have gathered in my… absence." He had grinned, a rictus expression, wrong on his snake-like face. "And Severus… accommodations will be made for your position, but_ do _try to be prompt in the future. Your tardiness tonight…_ displeased _me…"_

He had groveled, then, until he was excused, and apparated back to Hogwarts. The school had been in an uproar when he had departed, in the wake of the debacle that was the Third Task, and Potter showing up with a dead Diggory. He knew he should make his way to the Headmaster, report, start pulling together information that he could present to the Dark Lord… but all that would presume he could _move_ , and that his mind didn't feel so broken and raw from his mad master's assault that he could think straight or maintain consciousness… which was, he realized as darkness closed in, not the case at all…


	19. Thirty-Six - 1996

Harry Potter would have to die.

Dumbledore was certain that Harry Potter would have to die.

That he was, somehow… _connected_ to the Dark Lord.

Severus could not, for the life of him, decide whether the Felix Felicis had begun to rot the old man's brain (surely the symptoms shouldn't be this bad after only two and a half months?), or whether this was all part of some mad plan which would guarantee them the best possible outcome through sheer luck and Gryffindor nerve.

But that did not change the fact that the Headmaster was now certain that 'neither can live while the other survives' also meant, conversely, that neither could _die_ while the other survived.

And he had no intention whatsoever of informing Severus until the last possible moment. It was probably, he thought, only because the potion was weakening the old man's mental faculties in the first place, that he had forgotten to remove that particular revelation and place it in his pensieve for safekeeping.

Or perhaps Fortune had determined that he, Severus, needed to know this now, in order to somehow influence events as they were meant to play out according to the designs of whatever Felix-aided plan the Headmaster had concocted (and was stubbornly keeping secret).

He _never_ should have given the old man the Liquid Luck! It might have saved his life, for the time being, but now he was going to be second-guessing _everything_ until, well… probably forever.

But that didn't change the fact that the Plan called for Harry Potter to die.

And Severus, Dark Powers help him, had to act as though he didn't know.

It might be easiest to simply hide the knowledge from himself entirely, bury it deep and forget about it, because he didn't know how he felt about it at all, and he certainly couldn't afford to be worrying about it at inopportune moments.

But before he did… he had to at least _try_ to come to terms with it.

With the fact that Dumbledore had, apparently, decided, in his potions-addled state, that Severus' mission, keeping the boy safe from harm, had an end-date. That all of the work he had done these past years to maintain Potter's life was to be all for naught. He would not get to live the life Lily had never had. He would not get to grow up properly, have children, enjoy the pleasures of a world _not_ at war, or grow old with someone he loved.

Of course, Severus would never get any of those things, either, but he had long since resigned himself to that fact. It surprised him, slightly, how much it hurt to think that Potter would not, either – as though he had, ever so slightly, begun to think of himself as living vicariously through the boy.

No one could live forever, of course – not even the Dark Lord, and certainly not Potter – it was just… Severus had not expected to survive Lily, and he had _certainly_ not expected to survive her son.

He might be in shock, he decided distantly, because the only thing he felt was that the situation, from the fact that the boy was to be sacrificed to the fact that _he_ was to be the one to make it happen, in the end, to Dumbledore's _not telling him yet_ when the stubborn old fool had, at best, seven or eight months to live, was simply but unspeakably _wrong._

He wanted to scream.

He wanted to cry.

He wanted to march back up to the old man's office and put a knife through his heart for asking this of him. (Or rather, _not_ asking, and simply assuming that when he was ordered to, when the time was 'right,' that he would simply comply without question.)

All the guilt-tripping he had given the old man over his request for Severus to kill him (though truly he could hardly hide his satisfaction with that particular assignment, even if he did need to wait, yet, for the appropriate moment) was _nothing_ compared to the pain he wanted to inflict on him for the sake of the vow he would be forcing Severus to break and, yes, he would admit it here, in the private sanctuary of his deepest thoughts, for the sake of the boy, who did not deserve to be made a martyr of, for all his faults.

He did not want to do it.

He wished that he could know, truly, whether this – this _madness_ was dementia or genius, part of the Plan or simply the effect of diminishing mental capabilities on the part of the Headmaster.

If he had had any assurance that it was the latter, he might, he thought, use that as an excuse not to do it, to keep the crucial information to himself, even at the final moment, to not tell the boy – who would, of course, sacrifice himself for his friends, for the Greater Good, without a single thought.

Perhaps, he thought bitterly, that was why he had had to find out now, when he could not act on the information one way or another: had he learned of it any later in his master's decline, he almost certainly would have rejected it as a sign that Dumbledore had finally lost it completely, to turn on the child he had protected since before he was born.

Now, Severus supposed he would have to wait. He would have to pretend he knew nothing, as always. He would have to watch the old man's actions and decisions closely – determine whether he was still, by and large, rational, and from there make the decision of whether to obey when the time came and the order was finally issued.

If it turned out that Dumbledore was already quite mad, well… to die without magic and without honor in the end, for failing to kill a child on the word of a madman… it almost seemed a fitting end, after all these years of murdering and torturing on the word of another. To have the one good choice he had ever made result in the fate he had earned a hundred times over for all his bad ones was almost… poetic, in an ironic sort of way.

Lily would have thought it hilarious, he was sure, had it not been her son's life and the fate of all Magical Britain on the line.

If it turned out that Dumbledore _wasn't_ yet mad, well…

He would cross that bridge when he came to it.


	20. Thirty-Seven - 1997

"Severus…"

Nine years.

Nine years, he had been waiting for this moment, and now that it was finally _here_ , he wasn't sure he could do it – give in to his hatred and rage and the utter _resentment_ he felt for Albus Dumbledore's existence and _end him_.

If it had happened years ago, before the Dark Lord's return, he knew he would not have hesitated.

If he had been able to do it in a way that ensured he would not be blamed, he would not have hesitated.

But now, here, like this… he would be condemned by the Light and lauded by the Dark. He would appear to have chosen a side, definitively, and his only hope would be if that side won… and he was still bound to ensure that it did not.

With this curse, he killed himself as surely as he would Dumbledore.

But then, he had never expected to survive the end of the war.

And neither his vow to Narcissa nor his vow to Dumbledore would allow him to renege at this most vital point, as Draco hesitated and Potter screamed silently, his presence known only to the man who had silenced him and the master legilimens.

"Severus… _please_ …"

For all it would throw his entire world into upheaval, for all it would spell his doom, he had to do it: two words; six syllables.

 _"Avada Kedavra!"_

He threw everything he had into the spell: every moment of frustration he had borne since he began working at Hogwarts; every humiliation he had ever suffered at this man's hands; every pain his neglect had cost Severus as a child; and the fact of his trick, of his unacknowledged culpability in Lily's death and his demand that Severus engineer the death of her son for 'the Greater Good.'

It wasn't a Killing Curse – he knew that as it left his wand, for all it looked like one.

The Avada demanded an unerring sense of confidence and superiority, disdain for one's enemy's very _existence_. To destroy a person, a conscious, thinking being, to destroy a soul as one spoke… It was the mindset of a god, vanishing a single mote of dust.

One could not hate that which was too insignificant for words, which might as well not even _exist_ , and Severus did, despite his even tone and steady hand, _hate_ Albus Dumbledore.

What the effects of his twisted not-Avada might _be_ , he didn't know, because its power carried the old man over the edge of the tower, and the two-hundred foot drop to the flagstone courtyard below killed him just as effectively as the original version – and then it was time to run. He _had_ to get Draco to safety. It was imperative.

He had to return to the Dark Lord, report their success…

He would not be stopped in his mission by _Potter_ of all people, who apparently had _not_ been informed as to the plan and how events were likely to play out from this point on… how typical of the Old Goat!

He sent Draco on, long enough to give the boy a last lesson in humility, to show him he stood no chance against the Dark Lord if he could not even stand a duel with Severus, to give him a final word of advice, hidden among the pettiness, the anger, the scorn he held for the boy, who truly was just like his father now, after six years of Gryffindor. (In truth, though, six years was more than enough time for Severus to have come to dislike the son purely on his own lack of merit.)

He snapped off an over-powered knock-back jinx at the accusation of _coward_ , flinging the boy to the ground with the force of a whip-crack, but without leaving a mark. He almost wished he could kill the worthless boy – _that_ Avada would be text-book perfect. But he must live. He must not die _yet_. Not until the horcruxes were gone (what _had_ Dumbledore been thinking, giving Potter that information? Severus was _not_ the only legilimens in the war, and the child had not even mastered the most _basic_ form of Occlumency!) – not until the Dark Lord could be exterminated for good, and all at once.

And then there was a _hippogriff,_ of all things, harrying him, and Hagrid storming up with his crossbow, and Severus _ran_ , intercepting Draco, who was waiting indecisively at the gates and side-alonging him to the (relative) safety of the Manor and the presence of their lord.

They fell gracelessly to the ground, Severus panting – he was _not_ a runner – as Draco observed (his childish petulance not quite covering his very adult fear of what was to become of him after having failed in his mission) that hippogriffs really were a menace.

Severus could not disagree.


	21. Thirty-Eight - 1998

It is said that there is a moment of calm before the storm; the same was true, Severus thought, of battles.

He had received the Dark Lord's order to place the Carrows on guard in Ravenclaw, felt the burn of the Mark summoning his master, and now he stood at his window, watching the too-still grounds of Hogwarts, knowing that in a matter of hours, it would all be over, one way or the other. Potter would be dead, or the Dark Lord, or both, and their world would enter a new age.

He sincerely doubted that he would be alive to see it.

He almost hoped that he would not be – though he did need to live long enough to deliver the fateful message: he still had a part to play, and he could not bring himself to abandon the quest that had consumed the latter half of his life. His vow to Dumbledore to help end the Dark Lord had never really mattered much at all.

"My boy," Dumbledore's portrait spoke, gently.

Severus turned on him with fury. He did not want to hear whatever platitudes the dead man thought would help him send a seventeen-year-old _boy_ to his doom. "Shut up, you ceaseless meddler! I neither want nor need your intervention at this time, and you would do well to hold your painted tongue, lest I finally purge the world of your taint with fucking _fiendfire_!" It was one thing to become a martyr himself, or to fall in battle. He had been an adult, albeit a young and stupid and emotionally compromised one, when he had made his choices. Potter… Potter had been an infant. A child. An angry young man, brainwashed by Dumbledore and his peers into thinking that he had no choice at all.

Phineas Nigellus, the only other one of the Portraits of the Heads that still abided his presence, given the state to which he had allowed the school to fall in his so-brief tenure as its nominal master, sniggered slightly. "The flower is gone," he observed drily, as Dumbledore pointed in superior silence.

 _The night before the winter holiday, Severus returned to his office to find Luna Lovegood awaiting him, a wreath of shrunken pine-boughs on her head, wearing ceremonial white, like an angel, or a sacrifice._

 _"You know, then?" he asked, as gently as he could._

 _"Father has overstepped. In eight futures out of ten, they take me from King's Cross."_

 _"That is the plan, yes."_

 _She nodded. "We have planned accordingly." She met his eye as he poured them each a drink. "I'm sorry."_

 _"Cooperation would be fatal at this juncture, regardless," he admitted, sinking into his own chair, limp with exhaustion. "Was there something you wished to speak with me about?"_

 _She shrugged. "Nothing in particular. I had some unfinished business with a memory," she nodded at Dumbledore, who remained uncharacteristically silent, then hesitated, toying with her winter crown and sipping at her whisky, equally quiet. "Do you ever wonder if we are doing the right thing?" she asked, finally, for once sounding like a lost sixteen-year-old girl, rather than an ageless, wandering sage._

 _"No," he answered firmly. "No. Doubts, like honor, will get you killed. I have, on occasion, wondered whether the Plan is sound, whether it is, truly, the only way, but I do not allow myself to think on right and wrong. We will bring about an end to this war, and that is enough, right or not."_

 _She smiled, teasingly, though it didn't quite meet her eyes. "Doubts, like honor, make you human," she observed, and offered him a flower, a single asphodel bloom, transfigured from the braided fir. "She regrets her absence as well," she noted. "But you'll see her soon."_

 _He didn't need to ask who – asphodel and wormwood – Lily. "When?"_

 _"When it's time," she grinned at what had to be a private joke. "Take it," she said, standing and offering him the asphodel again. "You'll know when it's time to complete your mission."_

 _He did, and she left without another word, save a small, sad smile and a brush of anticipatory regret across his shields. He conjured a bell-jar for the flower, and set it on a shelf, surprisingly content to have had his imminent death foretold by a girl he was not entirely convinced was no longer an Oracle._

The flower, which had lived under a stasis charm, suspended on its shelf, for nearly five months, had finally reverted, asphodel – regret – transformed to pine – hope, and pity. No, he realized. Fir: _time_.

Most unexpectedly, he laughed. That was very clever. He had thought it for the first time months prior, but if there was one thing he had regretted about these past years, it was that he had not gotten to know the little White Mage better. If any student reminded him more of his lost friend, he could not think whom. Even Potter's eyes were no match for having found that same combination of wit and whimsy again, at long last.

And now it was time – time to complete his mission, and time to see Lily again – assuming Lovegood had the talent for scrying she seemed to have. He wondered briefly what the odds were, but it didn't matter.

The Dark Lord was coming; he needed to find Potter.


	22. The Entr'acte

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* * *

IV. The Entr'acte

* * *

.


	23. Liminality

Nagini's shield-bubble rolled over him from behind. He heard the distorted sound of Parsel and then _pain_. He was screaming. Again. He was on the floor. And again. She tore through the skin and muscle and tendons of his neck, injecting venom with every bite, caustic and _wrong_ , running through his veins.

He focused, thinking past the physical pain, even as his body reacted instinctively to the assault. He didn't know whether to be pleased that the anti-venin he had developed would finally be useful, because _by all the gods_ , he wished it hadn't been necessary, but he still had a mission to complete – he _had to find Potter_ , give him the final push. He just had to resolve to return, to use his old Time Turner to save himself, as soon as Voldemort had gone, before he died of blood loss. He would save himself. He would finish the mission. He just had to _hold on_.

"I regret it," his remaining master said.

Severus dearly wished he weren't dying on the floor so that he could express his shock at the uncharacteristic motion toward sentiment from the Dark Lord. Had he ever heard the man say he regretted _anything_ before? He didn't think so.

Strange, the paths a mind takes as it's dying, he thought, irrelevantly.

The hideous, mutant snake was lifted away from him, and Voldemort turned his back, swept from the room without another glance.

A bare moment before he would have expected a future-Severus to reveal himself, if he was, in fact, to follow through with his last-ditch back-up plan, Potter appeared from beneath the thrice-cursed Invisibility Cloak, Weasley and Granger close behind him, as always.

The boy stared down with Lily's eyes as Severus' fingers did their best to slow the flow of his life's blood enough to, enough to… well… he hardly needed to hold on, now, did he? After all, it appeared Voldemort had been correct: Potter would go where he was needed, and did not need to be tracked down. How the other Legilimens had managed to miss the three invisible teens, Severus didn't know – he hadn't sensed them, either, but then, he was busy dying of blood loss, so he thought his oversight might be excusable.

"Take… it… Take… it…" he rasped, pushing the necessary memories from him in an uncontrolled, wandless, wordless flood – too many; not just the ones of Dumbledore, but his vow, and Lily – some of Lily – her public face, not the private, must-keep-hidden memories of her: those were dissociated from the rest for the sake of their grand deception, all the way back in fourth year, when they began to distinguish between the show and their real lives.

Granger conjured a flask for him – _a Potter to the last, too caught up in the horror of the moment to_ act – and he collected the memories, as bid.

"Look… at… me…" In the last moments before consciousness faded away, he focused on Lily's eyes, that perfect Killing Curse shade, scared, with a hint of pity that she would never admit to, and… sorrowful, in a way that simply… wasn't her.

It was no good.

He couldn't fool himself into thinking she was here.

But then, he was almost gone himself. Too much blood gone. Cold. Too cold. He couldn't feel his extremities, or even his limbs, nor had he noticed when they went. With the memories, maybe? It wasn't important.

What was important was that for the first time in… possibly forever, he could… stop fighting.

He was so tired.

It was time.

He relaxed, and everything stopped.


	24. The Dead Know All

The pain was gone.

The aches from old tortures, the bone-deep exhaustion of the last year, the bodily fatigue from running and fighting – all gone.

Severus sat up and looked around. He was going to be _extremely upset_ if it turned out he had become a ghost.

But none of the children – and they were still children, for all they had just seen him die, and countless others in battle, and were thinner and more worn and harder-eyed than last he had seen them – took any notice. They knelt in silence beside his body as it cooled, showing a frankly unprecedented degree of respect. Pity they couldn't have managed to do so in lessons – he might have liked Potter and Weasley considerably more if they had.

Well, no, he wouldn't have.

But he might have ignored them, rather than antagonizing them.

Voldemort made his announcement – Potter would have one hour to turn himself over – and the children departed, _finally_ , leaving his body and _him_ behind.

He followed them, back through the Shack – gods and Powers, he hated this place – and across the grounds, assessing the damage and the losses, becoming increasingly aware that his perception was greater than it ever had been when he was alive.

He saw more.

He _knew_ more, without having to see it.

He watched as Potter ran for the Headmaster's Tower, for the pensieve there, and the knowledge Severus had left him – the wrong impression to the last, he realized, as he viewed the memories alongside the boy, but just enough of the story to convince him to play his part.

He spared some little of his attention for the school, as the surviving defenders prepared to make a last stand, as they gathered the dead and prepared to fight, perhaps hoping that they too would fall, rather than be conquered by the Dark. He knew, too, of the battle raging in Hogsmeade between his evacuated Slytherins and all the other students, as they fought amongst themselves, not of age, but no less dangerous for it. He saw some of them slip away, fleeing the fighting, while others, bound by ties of family or friendship or the Mark returned to the school. He made a point, as his consciousness expanded, of seeking out the Lovegood girl, who smiled as he brushed her mind and hummed the counter-curse for Sectum Sempra over a werewolf's victim – how had he never thought to use it thusly?

It was strange indeed, the paths a mind took as it died, and the regrets that lingered across the veil not less-so.

He saw the Death Eaters recovering in the forest, their ranks thinned, but their ferocity and battle-lust not diminished. He had no friends left, there, but he found Narcissa, concern written clearly on her face. Draco. It had to be. There was no one else for whom Narcissa would feel that degree of emotion, let alone _show_ it. Severus held no ill will toward the youngest Malfoy, despite the trouble the boy had given him over the years. (He knew, as his thoughts turned to his most irritating (former) Slytherin that he was still in the Castle, hiding, trapped behind enemy lines. He looked traumatized, and was missing one of his constant shadows – had Crabbe the Younger fallen in the fighting?) Bellatrix was simpering at the Dark Lord, as usual, and he saw Greyback rallying his wolves: the two most dangerous of the Dark Lord's faithful lieutenants were still alive. Nott was nowhere to be seen, but there were giants moving in the trees, and that had been his project. The vampires were gone, so perhaps Killian, who had been their contact, was dead. The Dark Lord himself stood silently, head bowed, waiting.

All that he knew, but the majority of his attention was for the boy who was the lynch-pin of this fight. Between the desire to see the boy dead, and thus the Dark Lord, and the habit of long protectiveness over Lily's only child, he could not turn away from the boy.

He watched as Potter slipped past the others under his father's cloak, hidden from even Death, but not the dead. He walked away from his friends and followers (though Severus knew that the boy did not consider them followers), as he left them behind without fanfare. Perhaps he knew that they would have stopped him, if they could have.

It certainly seemed so, for he lied (poorly) to Longbottom as he assigned the young man (for Longbottom _had_ become a man, finally, tempered by his role in the conflict this past year) to finish the task that had been set for him: to kill Nagini, the last horcrux, and in so doing, make the Dark Lord mortal once more. Did Potter know, Severus wondered, that Longbottom had been the other child once considered a threat, all those years ago? It hardly mattered, in any case.

He watched as the boy paused again, as he whispered the truth to himself, as he accepted the reality of his own death and solved the riddle of the Snitch, felt the draw and pull of it as Potter turned the Resurrection Stone in his palm, summoning false illusions of his fallen family to walk with him to his doom. He knew, in that moment, that there was more to the legend of the Master of Death than even Dumbledore had thought; felt the potential to return, rather than to go on and become one with Death, if only he and the holder of the Hallow willed it so. Lupin, only new-dead summoned, must have felt it the same, but he, like Severus, seemed to have accepted the reality of his death. Lily, the elder Potter, and Black were naught but hollow caricatures, built on the holder's expectations to lure him further into death. It was so _obvious_ from _this_ side. He wondered if, in the end, the boy would resent the final manipulation.

He watched as the child – so young, so naïve, for all he had seen of death and suffering and war – walked into the forest, not without fear, but with the same courage that had carried him into the Chamber of Secrets all those years before, this time the stakes not a single girl's life, but the fate of a battle and the tide of a war. The summonings escorted him like an honor-guard, as invisible to the living as the boy beneath his cloak.

He watched as the boy – Lily's son, truly, in the end, to sacrifice himself, without even fighting – revealed himself. As the Dark Lord cast his second Killing Curse upon the Boy Who Lived. As Harry Potter fell, lifeless, to the ground, his soul torn from his body, his heart stopped in shock…

Or…

Not.

Three second passed in stunned silence, and then the boy's heart beat – a sound too soft for the Death Eaters to hear, but Severus knew, as he seemed to know so much more than he ought to, as he knew the anxiety building in the Castle as the hour passed and there was no attack, as he knew the panic that rose as the defenders realized that the White King had left the board, and given himself over to the other side. The Dark Lord fell to his knees, as though struck, and the Death Eaters rushed forward, only to be ordered back. Narcissa came forward and _lied_ , and then… and then…

Everything began moving more quickly, a blur of action, as the Death Eaters proceeded to the Castle and Longbottom killed the snake. The defenders fought like berserkers in their determination to die before they surrendered. Potter moved like a ghost through the fighting, his Cloak apparently proof against attack, for he paid no mind to deflected spells. Bellatrix fell to Molly Weasley's wand, and the defenders cheered as Potter revealed himself. They watched, spellbound, as he taunted the Dark Lord, spouting utter nonsense and misunderstanding, pushing the older wizard into a rage, throwing himself into a duel with the blind faith that no matter what he did now, he was assured victory.

 _Avada Kedavra_.

 _Expelliarmus_.

And it was the Dark Lord, quite mad and doubting himself after failing _yet again_ to kill the boy, who faltered.

It was done.

Finally.

Severus relaxed, and as he did, his awareness shifted again. He saw the whole of the war, from its beginnings in the conflict of personalities between Dumbledore (young and arrogant, certain of his own judgement, but fearful of power: once bitten, twice shy) and Tom Riddle (young and arrogant, certain of his own potential, and filled with hatred for any who dared try to put him in his place) to its end, the seeds planted not with the birth of Harry Potter, but with the birth of Lily Evans (it only seemed too reasonable, in hindsight, that she should be the Dark Lord's daughter, raised in ignorance, the key to her sire's downfall). He saw his own decisions, and hers, twined together, a thread of misery, of blood, of devotion lasting beyond death, echoing those of the Dark Lord and the Blackheart, repeating a pattern inverted. He saw Tom Riddle's life, and the circumstances of his birth, not so different from the life Severus might have led, had his father been a different man. He saw the life of Harry Potter, a new variation on the theme, his childhood both like and unlike Lily's and Tom Riddle's; his youth both like and unlike his father's and his mother's; his life in the future more satisfying than any of them might have hoped for themselves. He saw Dumbledore, trying desperately to shape the end of the story to his own design, not realizing that the pattern was determined twenty years and more before he heard his precious prophecy.

He understood, finally, that the Plan had never been for Harry Potter to die, but to become the Master of Death, to be given the power to walk beyond the Veil and back: a power the Dark Lord had coveted from his time as a student, but had never known and never _would_ know.

He understood, finally, that Dumbledore had been wrong in almost every respect, considering the relationship between Potter and the Dark Lord, and yet had managed to guide the boy into killing the Dark Lord regardless. That, he thought, must be what a true prophecy looked like in action.

He understood, finally, how it all came together, uncounted knots and turns and twists in the threads of their lives, woven together to form the Tapestry of fate, and it was _beautiful_.

He could hardly imagine it any other way, but he knew how time worked, and as he thought of the possibility, his perspective shifted. He saw that what he had initially seen as threads branched out in infinite directions, the 'Tapestry' a multi-dimensional, shifting, twisting, growing thing. He quickly became lost in the intricacy of it, until he found a world, a path, which he could not turn away from – a world where he and Lily Evans had never met.


	25. A Might-Have-Been

The fact that he and Lily Evans had never met was not, by far, the largest difference between this world and the one in which he had been born, though it was not so very far away from his own: his father had left his mother, and she had begged her family to take her back. They had refused, though they granted her a stipend, on the condition that she and her misbegotten half-muggle child change their name and move to the continent, distancing the House of Prince from their shame. Severus had attended Durmstrang. His first language was German, and he was far less concerned with the Dark Lord of Britain than his latest treatise on the theoretical basis of mind magic. He had married well, taking the name of his half-veela wife (a whip-smart blonde who found his ability to speak to her without devolving into a drooling puddle of hormones more than adequate compensation for his face), and they were exceedingly content with their two children (nearly grown by the time the other Severus was the same age as he) and a chateau on the Riviera.

Lily, on the other hand…

Lily, somehow, had ended up teaching at Hogwarts.

It was almost as though without him there, she had taken on his fate.

She had been in Gryffindor, and with no reason to hate them, had become friends with the Marauders much sooner. Somehow (Severus refused to look too closely at the details of that particular alliance), she had ended up in a three-way relationship with Potter and Black, though it had not lasted through the end of the war. She had managed to bear twins, a boy and a girl. It was well known that one was a Black and the other a Potter, though the broken triad refused to disclose which child was blood-heir to which House: they were recognized by both, as if they were the product of a Black-Potter alliance, and both answered to the name of Evans.

When the war ended, in the summer of 1982, it was not with a single, legendary event: Dumbledore finally swallowed his pride when the Order of the Phoenix collapsed around his ears, and requested assistance from the ICW. The Death Eaters were also coming apart at the seams by then, their internal coherency fractured by the Dark Lord's increasingly obvious instability. The Peacekeepers had descended upon the beleaguered nation with an efficiency which had not been seen on either side since 1978. They captured well over half of the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself. The ringleaders were deported to Nurmengard, to live out their lives like muggles. Many of the Second Circle were sent to Azkaban. Narcissa still managed to save her husband and a few of his closest associates with her well-planned Imperius Defense, though not so many as Severus recalled.

Also unlike his timeline, the Light was not exempt from the ICW War Crimes Tribunals. Dumbledore was ordered to step down from his position in the ICW for the actions he encouraged in the war, but he retained enough power to shield those whom he chose to protect. Lily was one of them. She had, Severus thought, committed the most obvious and egregious crimes on the Light side of the battlefield. The others might have used the Killing Curse in the heat of the moment, and several of their healers had turned to ritual when their charms were not sufficient, but Lily had invoked a goddess and raised the dead on the battlefield. Those events were unchanged, here, or at least similar to the ones Severus had witnessed in person, if not exactly the same. There were those who thought her too dangerous to live, with that kind of power to hand, and more who thought her blatant disregard for the Statute deserved punishment regardless of her reasons.

She threw herself on Dumbledore's mercy, much as Severus had done, and a deal had been negotiated: her loyal service to him, personally, in exchange for his protection. So Dumbledore had stood as guarantor of her actions, and taken her off to Hogwarts. Her children were raised by Potter and Black, while Lily became the general factorum of the Castle in Severus' place. She officially taught an elective in Healing, though her curriculum overlapped heavily with Potions and Charms, and the second term of every year was devoted to 'Preventative Measures' which was, more or less, Defense (though that position still took its yearly sacrifice). Over the course of two years, she worked her way into Dumbledore's good graces (something Severus had never attempted), and convinced him to revive the position of the Disciplinary Agent, which had been vacant since John McKinnon's retirement.

By 1986 she had more or less taken over the leadership of Slytherin House under the pretense of keeping the peace within the school. In 1989, this state of affairs was declared official, as Horace Slughorn finally retired and his replacement was a former Hufflepuff. Lily was unanimously elected as the most Slytherin member of the staff, including the newly-hired Aurora Sinistra, who was actually an alumna. Aurora took over with Discipline, which Severus thought worked out well, and for a time things were stable at Hogwarts.

In 1987, Bellatrix killed the Dark Lord in Nurmengard, freeing his soul. Few knew that a psychotic madwoman had murdered her one-time lord and master, a washed-up, magicless Dark Lord in the depths of Grindelwald's prison. Even fewer cared.

Five years later, just after the tenth anniversary of the end of the war, the Chamber of Secrets was opened. The Evans twins, Hufflepuffs in their second year, were revealed as Parselmouths, raising nasty questions as to where they had gotten that particular talent. Lily Evans smiled mysteriously for the public, and refused to answer them. Behind the walls of Hogwarts, she healed the basilisk and returned it to its one-time mission of protecting the school. The Dark Lord's horcrux she captured intact.

In 1994, the Dark Lord's shade found Barty Crouch Junior, and was re-embodied with the blood of Crouch Senior. Whispers began to spread of his return. Lily offered the horcrux a body and his freedom from the original, for the price of his assistance in destroying their sire once and for all.

Severus suspected legilimency of the highest standard as the only possible explanation for the easy acceptance of Lily's new 'apprentice' in the autumn of 1995 – a wizard of twenty-five years who called himself Todd Oliver Lammor and seemed unable to decide whether he resented his Mistress, or held her in the highest esteem. With only ten years between them in age, rumors abounded that there was more to their relationship than a simple Apprenticeship contract. Severus was, he suspected, the only one outside the duo who knew the truth: they were two bodies and two minds with one life between them, bound every bit as deeply as Potter and the Dark Lord had been.

With half of Tom Riddle's soul as a focus, it was laughably easy for Lily and Todd to track down and destroy the other horcruxes, or most of them, at least. The second war ended as the first had done, with no sacrifice and little fanfare, in the summer of 1996. Voldemort's soul – what was left of it – was drawn into its final anchor, still locked away in the abandoned Vault of Lestrange, imprisoned as surely as he had been in Nurmengard.

Todd took on the Defense Position and broke its curse. Lily continued to teach Healing. The twins graduated and settled into long-term relationships, the boy with Hermione Granger, and the girl, to her fathers' utter horror (and Severus' great amusement), with Draco Malfoy. Dumbledore died in 2002, due to an overnight onset of diabetes, for which Lily reprimanded Todd, and Severus silently congratulated him. Aurora became the Deputy Head to Minerva's Headmistress. The Evans twins held a double wedding two years later. Todd met his match there in N. Tonks Lupin, by then a thirty-four-year-old widow and single mother of three, finally laying to rest the rumors of his and Lily's torrid affair (excepting the ones where the metamorph was simply added into the mix). He left Hogwarts to take up politics when the Democratization bill finally passed, and became the first Commons representative to be elected Minister of Magic in 2010.

With no reason to remain at Hogwarts any longer (her children graduated, Dumbledore dead, and Todd gone), Lily retired from teaching to focus on her research. And without teaching, Severus was disturbed to see, her 'research' grew ever more ethically questionable, delving into the nature of magic, the Powers, and the human mind in search of, as she excitedly explained to Todd, a way to turn muggles and squibs into wizards, so that the Statute of Secrecy might finally be lifted without any danger of muggles hating and fearing that which lay beyond their grasp. Todd, of course, was opposed to the idea of suddenly-more-powerful muggles, and moved to halt what she termed the New Eden Project. Lily fought him, arguing that they would, of course, handle it more delicately than he seemed to think, but insisting that her research was an important first step. Neo-Grindelwaldian Anti-Statutarians flocked to her side, and in 2017, Lily Evans was declared to be a Dark Lady, at war with Magical Britain.


	26. Behind the Curtain

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* * *

V. Behind the Curtain

* * *

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	27. Come Back

Severus looked away, then. He did not think he could bear to watch her fall, or else see her follow in her father's footsteps, destroying the world even as she attempted to remake it in her own image. He sought her out again and again, across worlds and time-lines, looking for any sign that she might have lived a long and happy life, if things had been different, somewhere, at some time. He saw worlds in which they ended up together; worlds where she was childless; worlds where he died early on in the first war; worlds where one or both of them were born without magic, even. He saw her die in the war a hundred times over; in experiments gone wrong, like Pandora Lovegood; in childbirth, once. He saw her lose herself in research and obsession, saw her find out about her true parentage at every age imaginable. He saw her ally herself openly with the Dark, and reject it entirely, becoming in truth the paragon of Light Dumbledore had painted her after her death.

Even when she lived, when she did not become obsessed with the Statute or some aspect or other of magical theory, when she _should_ have been happy – when there was no reason she _shouldn't_ be – she wasn't. There was something missing in her eyes, as though she had lost the joy and the spark that made her _Lily_ , rather than just another boring witch.

Perhaps, he thought traitorously, it was better that she had died young. Not that he would not have loved her, even as a Dark Lady, but it seemed that she and the world were ill-suited to each other: neither could live while the other survived, as it were.

He was watching a ten-year-old Lily and Severus performing a ritual to honor the dead, in a world where they had met later (her magical foster-parents had died, leading her to join him in Cokeworth, where they had, of course, become friends), when a voice whispered to him, on a plane apart from all of it: _"Sev… Severus… Severus Aquinas Snape! Focus, damn you!_ "

He did, turning all of his attention to that voice – not only was it familiar, but it was the very first indication that anyone might still exist with whom he could actively engage as more than just an observer in the great pensieve of the multiverse.

All at once, the children he was observing and their entire world vanished, as though he had been pulled into (or out of) a mindscape. The Tapestry was nowhere to be seen. It had been replaced by a dark-lit land. There was no obvious source of illumination, and yet he could see perfectly well. His view was bounded by black earth and grey sky, any distinguishing features lost in a swirling white fog, which became impenetrable a few yards away. A different Lily stood before him, blood-red lips and Avada-green eyes not ten years old and fixed in a determined scowl, but grinning, and caught at the height of her youth: she looked as she had when he identified her body all those years ago, though she was dressed as he had never seen her, barefoot in a simple black shift.

" _Lily_ ," he breathed, frozen in shock to be standing here, now, talking to her.

She laughed, the same high, sharp expression of joy he remembered from so long ago, and threw her arms around him, nearly strangling him in her enthusiasm – also much as he recalled. He held her so tightly he lifted her off her feet, burying his face in her hair – its summer copper faded, here, to auburn, but smelling as she always did of lemon and verbena.

"I missed you, too, Sev," she mumbled into his shoulder before pushing her shoulders away from his slightly. "But put me _down_ , you tall bloody bastard!"

Now it was Severus' turn to laugh, and he couldn't seem to stop, even when faced with the famous Lily Evans Death Glare. It was too much of a relief to be reunited with her, finally.

"Sev, get it together," she demanded, taking a seat on the ground as though they were back at Hogwarts, studying under their tree. "I have something important to tell you!"

He snorted, kneeling beside her. "We're _dead_ , Lily. We have all the time in the world!"

She shook her head slowly. "We don't. And we're not. Not really."

"I _distinctly_ remember dying," he informed her drily. "It was _decidedly uncomfortable_."

Her mouth twisted in a grimace. "It's worse the second time – Soul protection – never mind." She shuddered slightly. "It was worth it, though."

"Potter – Harry – you would have been proud of him," Severus said stiffly, turning away.

She laid a hand against his cheek. "I know. The dead know all, Sev. But I didn't just do it for him." He faced her again to see her eyes flash in the low light. "I keep my promises, and I swore that I would destroy anyone who dared to keep us apart. Daddy dearest had to go."

"I see you know about that, too," he noted, smirking slightly.

"Well, it does explain a few things, doesn't it?" she rolled her eyes.

"Just a few. So what is so powers-bedamned important for you to tell me?" He laid himself down with his head in her lap, as though they were still children, whiling away a long afternoon by the lake, and he not twice her age, nor the dour Head of Slytherin.

She hummed slightly, giving him a long, evaluating look before speaking. "It's a story. A story about a boy and a girl. He was born in shadows and raised himself in lonely corners, angry at the world, but in time he became the steward and protector of those no one else cared for. She was born in light, but her heart was full of darkness, and she sought him out because he understood her like no one else ever had.

"He made her special, instead of just wrong. He gave her the gift of belonging, even if it was only with him. She gave him a purpose, the spark of life. She made him happy, like nothing else ever had. Together, they were both more than they ever could have been alone, or with anyone else.

"As they grew up, they forgot that, or betimes they never knew.

"In one version of the story, they were separated by time, and did not meet until they were already grown. In another, she left him behind three times: once as she fell in love with the man he would one-day be; once when she decided to try to be what the world expected of her; and once when she grew up faster than he, moving on to the next great adventure without him. She waited for him, you know, but time moves differently here than there, and when they met again, he had all but forgotten her.

"He lost himself in his work as he waited, buried himself beneath it. He grew around the hollow space of her absence, became a man of duty, honorable in his way. He became the man he needed to be, to be the man she had loved and would love again. When he moved on, she was waiting, and she woke him from the sleeping life that he had lived to the echoes of a story as old as time, of the lady who moves between the light and the dark, bound to leave, but always to return, beloved of Death, the flower of spring plucked and stolen away from the sun.

"Death brought his flower to the underworld, to the land of death, stiff and uncertain in the face of unyielding Life, but drawn to her flame. He courted her there, offering her hospitality in the hopes that she might choose to stay instead of burning him alive with longing, and at long last, she accepted, taking as a symbol of their covenant the fruit and wine he offered, and only just in time.

"She ate but a single bite before she was torn away, back to the Light: six seeds of a pomegranate, like drops of blood bursting on her tongue.

"The story they tell in the land of Light says that she was always promised to the lord of the underworld. Her mother was bereft, but her father gave her away regardless, and in the end they compromised: she was wed to Death and bound to his side for half of each year. But the story leaves out that the flower was a goddess in her own right, and not so easily given. in the land of Death, they know their queen to be fierce and powerful, and they say that had she not wanted to go, she would not have.

"But she liked that strange, stern king, in his land so different from everything she had ever known. His darkness called to that at the heart of her, for there can be no beginnings without end. It called to her, to the discontent which had set her wandering the mountain vales on the day he had first encountered her, whispering of belonging. When she returned to him, to the underworld, it was with a smile and a kiss to seal their marriage between them, for it was not half a year's exile, in her mind, but half a year free to live in the home of her heart.

"That was the story the girl told, when at last she met her man again. The story is just a story, of course, but belief gives it power, and there are seeds of truth in the myth…" she trailed off, her tone teasing, begging him to ask.

He obliged her, rolling his eyes at her dramatics. "And what seed of truth does this myth hold?"

She beamed at him. "Six drops of blood are the keys to a new life, and a kiss the acceptance to seal it. It's time for you to come back to the story, Sev. _Our_ story."


	28. Remember

Lily peered earnestly down at him, determination lurking around the corners of her mouth, but Severus was lost.

"I don't understand."

"You will," she smirked, conjuring a dagger from nowhere. "Ready?"

He had forgotten what it was like, dealing with Lily on a tear. He sighed. "What do I need to do?"

"I told you, Sev – six drops of blood, and a kiss to seal it. Just open your mouth."

It was not, sad to say, the strangest or most awkward ritual demand she had ever made of him (that title still, most definitely, belonged to the one and only sex rite Severus had ever performed). He had to ask, though: "Dead people can bleed?"

She shrugged. "We're not really dead, remember? You'll understand soon."

He opened his mouth without further complaint and she jabbed a finger to let the warm, coppery drops fall. They gleamed, near-black in the non-light, each one growing slowly before falling onto his tongue. He made a mental note to tease her, later, about _bleeding_ with a sense of ceremony. And then her lips were on his, soft and cool. He smiled, rising up to deepen the kiss, but she drew away. Before he could ask why, she put her lips to his ear and whispered an order: _"Remember_."

He did.

He remembered sitting on a dark throne, overlooking swaying fields of souls like wheat, like asphodel, his green-eyed queen chattering beside him, not sitting in her own chair, but perched on the arm of his as they attended to the petitions of supplicants.

He remembered her wrath, when given free rein to mete out the punishment of those who had escaped it in life.

He remembered dancing beneath strange stars, with the eyes of all the gods upon them: she had whispered, " _Let them stare_ ," and whirled away, laughing.

He remembered lifetimes spent together, ruling over the dead. He remembered Orpheus, Theseus and Aethra. He _definitely_ remembered Pirithous. He remembered Heracles and the goddamn Cerberus – if it had been up to _him_ , he would have let the so-called hero keep the damned animal, but Persephone demanded its eventual return.

(He remembered her playing _fetch_ with the bloody beast in the fields of Asphodel, laughing, _"You know I always wanted a dog, Sev…"_ )

He remembered Coronus, and growing up in darkness, alone for the longest time, but he also remembered Tobias, and running and hiding when he drank.

He remembered the War, remembered creeping through the ranks of sleeping titans, destroying their weapons the night before the final battle. He remembered becoming a spy, first reporting on the Light, and then the Dark, sabotaging one plan and letting another stand, shifting the outcomes of each battle with information given or withheld, deceiving one and all as he hid in plain sight.

He remembered the division of the Earth: his banishment to the underworld, exile from Olympus; the inevitable decision to rule these lands and the spirits of the dead to the best of his ability, and the slow realization that he would not trust _his_ realm and _his_ people to anyone else. He remembered being thrown into the governing of Slytherin House, scorned by the professors who had all known him as a child, an outsider among them until he found his feet, until they realized that they needed him and he realized he was actually quite able to hold his own against the students.

He remembered seeing Persephone for the first time, red-gold hair floating on the breeze as she danced with her handmaidens in the hollows, spreading flowers in their wake. He remembered seeing Lily for the first time, loose copper waves turning to elf-locks as she flung herself into the air from the swings, freedom incarnate.

He remembered Zeus tearing her away for the first time, just when he was finally sure she was his, _willingly_ – it was the same feeling he had felt when the Hat shouted ' _GRYFFINDOR!_ ' and he thought his world was ending.

He remembered her return, a kiss and ' _I chose you'_ ; a wicked grin over the breakfast table: _"I'm a Gryffindor and you're a Slytherin, and we're friends…"_

(He remembered her slipping into Hades under her own power for the first time, crawling into his bed and waking him with a kiss: " _We're not meant to be apart, you know_.")

He remembered other lives, too, not his nor the god's: Angry, violent, fearful fathers; weak and apathetic mothers; himself, whoever he was, sometimes running and sometimes thrown out, but always ending up in the dark, alone. He remembered building the Horse on the beach at Troy, and hiding inside it; being thrown into the pits beneath the Colosseum and the slaves he had cared for there; a gypsy girl dancing in the fire-light, its ruddy glow burnishing her dark hair with red as her eyes met his across the camp; an enormous bear of a man kicking him onto his back, sneering that he would marry the bear's sister, or pay for ruining her; a bright-eyed girl with a mischievous smile and strawberry-blonde curls slipping out the back door of her parents' house and throwing herself into his arms. He whirled her around as she giggled: "I don't care if they think we're too young. I reckon they'll come to terms with it when they don't have a choice."

The memories – a thousand lifetimes' variations on a theme – overwhelmed him, drowning his own consciousness until, when he could finally focus on the green eyes above him, on the sharp teeth worrying a lip uncertainly, it was with the very strange sense that he was not only Severus, but also Hades, as were all of those who had come before.

"Lily," he began, his voice only a little shaky, which he considered a triumph, given the circumstances. "Or is it Persephone? What was _that_?"

She sighed, relief evident on her features, even from this angle. "I'm a bit between the two, at the moment. I suppose you could call me Calla; Lilies are funeral flowers, after all."


	29. Explain

"Calla, then," Severus drawled, sitting up. "I do believe you owe me an explanation. And do try to make it one I can actually follow."

She hesitated. He suppressed a groan. Hesitations only preceded explanations that she didn't think he was going to like. "Um… what do you know about Avatars of the Powers?"

"It would be safe to assume the answer to that question is 'nothing.'"

"Well, that makes this awkward." She hesitated _again_.

" _Lil –_ Calla…"

"You're an Avatar of Hades."

"Which _means_?"

"Fuck. Do you remember when I told you about Aspect Forms and Archetype Resonance, and how it's like Animagus affiliation back in fifth year?"

Severus sighed. " _Calla_. That was _twenty-three years ago_ for me."

"So… vaguely?" she smirked at him. He glared. "All right, alright. So all the Powers have different Aspects which generally correlate to gods in the old pantheons. Some gods are aspects of multiple Powers, and their domains often overlap. In this case, we're interested in the Deathly Power, specifically the Aspects of Hades and Persephone. Each Aspect has a Form or Archetype, which is defined by their mythos: the key stories that are known and retold and remembered about each of them. As the myths change, the Aspects can change. To put it _simply_ , your life has enough in common with Hades' that there is a natural resonance between your soul and the Archetype, kind of like how there's a certain form that resonates with your magic for the animagus transformation. Here, in this place, you are Hades, though Hades is not just you; I'm sure there are exactly as many Hades as Persephones: they're so closely linked that I suspect that we both had to be suited for our roles for either of us to _ascend_ to Avatar status."

"So that was… ascension?"

"Ah… kind of?"

" _Calla_ …" he repeated, in a warning teacher's tone.

She shrugged. "It's complicated because there's two of us, and I was ready before you were, and in fact my death is part of what made you suitable in the first place, but honestly, you're much more Hades than I am Persephone. I had to learn before I came here to fit the mold; you didn't. But since we're tied together, you're the only one who can go back and teach me. Except it's not really back, just forward in a different direction, like a line drawn on a Mobius strip; take out the paper and it crosses itself over, inside becoming outside and vice versa." She sketched shapes with her hands as she talked. "We're at the crossing point, now, with you headed one way and I the other. You have to keep going, or you'll never catch up. You just have to tell the younger me what she needs to know when you run into her along the way."

Severus sputtered. "You want me to – what? Go back in time and tell you all this stuff that you're telling me now? Calla – _Lily_ – _time doesn't work like that_ – it's a paradox – we can't invent new knowledge between us simply by your telling and my telling you!"

The girl – goddess? – sniggered. "No. Don't even try. You don't need to tell me about extraplanar temporal mechanics – I picked that up on my own, and besides? Everything I just told you? It's not really like that at all. You just need to _find_ me, and let me see what we could be, together, okay? Just… remind me of how it should be."

"I – _fine_ ," he sighed. He still had no idea how to do that, but at least it didn't bend his brain in knots trying to think about it like the advanced arithmancy he had no doubt was the true explanation behind her metaphor.

She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "Don't worry. You'll do it. You did it before. If it's easier, you can think of it as a broken circle, outside of time. Or –"

"No!" he interrupted. "No more bloody metaphors! It shouldn't be possible to get a headache after you're dead," he complained.

She grinned. "'Sing me a song to a silent tune, tell me the truest lie'?"

"Oh, shut up."

"Oh, but you'll want to know this one! The truest lie is that in this place, Sev? Time works however we want it to."

"Except when it doesn't?" he suggested mockingly.

She nodded, grinning and ignoring his sarcasm. "I can't stay with you, for example – you have to go on and play your part without me, but you'll catch me up eventually, or I'll catch you. And the circle is still being drawn; it's not complete. If you don't play your part, I won't be able to have played mine, and all this will fall apart."

It was a sad comment on how much time travelling he had done in his life that that sentence made sense. It might have been more depressing, though, that out of everything she had said, _that_ made the _most_ sense. Well, that and the Parallax quote. He decided to take her word for it that he would be able to do… whatever it was that he needed to do, whenever he needed to do it. It really was best to try not to overthink these things. "Okay."

"Okay. I'm going to have to go, soon." She leaned against him, apparently content to just spend however much more time they had (regardless of what that meant) enjoying each other's company.

"You've known this for a long time, haven't you?" he asked, after a long moment simply savoring her warmth against his chest and watching the fog swirl around them. She hummed in agreement. "Then why did you never tell me _before_?"

She shrugged, looking up at him, as inscrutable as ever. "You weren't ready. Now you are. Remember: six drops of blood, and a kiss to seal it."

"I'll remember."

"Good," she smiled. "Bring it full-circle, and let me keep my promises."

"Promises? What promises?" he asked, slightly alarmed, as he noticed her becoming less and less tangible beside him.

"Forever, Sev. I promised you forever. So go find me."

She slipped through his fingers with a Cheshire grin and a glint of Avada-green eyes.


	30. Third Act Pays for All

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* * *

VI. Third Act Pays for All

* * *

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	31. Six

It was all too easy, Severus found, to slip into the role of Hades. It was not only time which bent itself to his will in the land of black earth and grey skies (which, he suspected were truly black as well, but lightened by the swirling white fog between it and the earth, and the glow that cast shadows with no particular source). The dead were legion, though only a few hundred seemed to have the consciousness to cause trouble and hold grievances at any particular time. The lesser chthonic deities were far less numerous, and far more amusing, with their spats and petty problems – like all gods, they reflected their people, and like people, they often caused mischief and strife simply to avoid boredom.

He ruled them all as evenly as he could, sorting those who desired oblivion and lived in an afterlife of their own making, lost in their own dreams of eternity, from those who had earned a true afterlife of rewards or suffering beyond their capacity to imagine. He guarded the whispering undead shards of Chronos in the pits of Tartarus and the coveted waters of the Five Rivers. He recognized all who came before him, finding those who belonged a place in the never-ending expanse of his realms, and denying the still-living heroes sent by their gods to test his patience. He answered the summons of those who would speak to the dead, and betimes, when he felt they had made sacrifices enough, allowed them an audience with the ones they truly sought.

He could not have said how much time passed in that way, how long it took for him to think of himself as Hades, rather than Severus, but in time he did, and the Moirai must have known it, for it was not so long after Severus faded into the background, his life and love and suffering simply one memory among the thousand thousand echoes of his story throughout time, that he found _her_ again, the echo of a girl who matched Severus' own, whose presence, he knew, would complete him.

It was on the night when the witches and wizards of Europe celebrated Death and the Dead. There was a flare of light across his realm as a ritual was initiated, and the Dead – those of Elysium, who had earned a reprieve – followed it back to its source, speaking and dancing with the living for a single night, sustained by and reinforcing the magic of the Final Power and the mages who acknowledged it.

Hades watched from the flames as she twisted and spun, following the same pattern as all the other dancers, but with an added measure of… grace, perhaps. Her eyes, glowing with magic, met his – or seemed to, despite his lack of corporeal form. They held all the darkness of which youth is capable in its excesses and a longing to transcend the boundaries of her mortal form, and he _knew_ in an instant that she was meant to be his.

She sacrificed life on the altar of Death, and when the Dead took the celebrants, _he_ took _her._

When she woke in his bed ( _their_ bed), it was without fear. She peered around curiously before her gaze settled upon him. "Sev? Where are we? And why are you so old?"

Hades smiled softly, recalling a life once lived. "We are in the underworld, Lily. And I'm not _old_ , I'm _timeless_."

She laughed, and clambered free of the sheets. She ran to the window which overlooked the river Lethe and gasped as she took in the magnificence of his kingdom, spread out before her. "Sev…"

"Yes, Lily?"

"Is this real?"

He answered her question with a question: "Does it matter?"

She laughed again, the high, light sound cutting through the darkness of his world like a sharp, cold ray of the winter sun.

He reveled in it.

He had told her truly, when he said that he – and his realm – were timeless; its years were marked by distant echoes from the world of the living, and its inhabitants unchanging. Though they lived together for a short eternity and grew somewhat in experience, neither of them truly aged.

He fashioned her a throne of her own, to stand beside his. She rarely used it, preferring to wander and speak to the Dead as he held court, or else perch beside him as he meted out justice.

Though he called her his Lady, he did not take her as his wife. She was far too young to be truly attractive to him, any more than she had been when she was sixteen and he seventeen, and he had come to realize that she was more his sister than his lover.

Not that _sister_ truly captured the way he felt about her, either.

She was, he now knew, to put it simply, his soul mate. As Calla had said, they belonged together. They were _more_ together. Their threads were bound together in the Tapestry and woven through it as a single cord.

He loved her; he always would – and yet…

Though her mind was cunning and ruthless, and her heart held darkness and longing to be _more_ , she was yet a child, untouched and untested by the horrors the world held, and no true match for him – not yet.

He knew almost from the beginning that she was not ready, not truly, to become the queen he saw in her future, and trapped in the underworld she could not become that queen… but he could not bring himself to give her up.

How could he, when she brought life and whimsy and joy to his world? He caught her playing fetch with the Cerberus and skipping stones with Angelos on the flaming river Phlegethon, and on one occasion even found her wheedling tales of the marriage of Erebus and Nyx from the primordial goddess of the night.

She acted, he realized later, very much the princess, rather than the queen, amusing herself by making demands of him and the people who bowed to Hades, appearing when they called for Kore, for Melivia or Aristi. The young woman, they called her; sweet one, best loved among the gods of the dead. She took their worship as her due, as she ever had Severus', when they were children together, but she flitted from one place and time to the next like a leaf blown in the spring breeze unwilling or unable to settle by his side.

As idyllic as her influence made his realm, it was not _this_ Lily that he craved to make him whole.

For the first time, he saw fear in her eyes, as he sat beside her and told her that she must return to her own life, her own time.

"Will… will I remember all this?" she asked plaintively.

He did not know. He hoped so. "Perhaps."

"I cannot just go back to Hogwarts, to forgetting all of this and living a normal life! I won't! I want to remember!" she demanded.

He had never been able to withstand her demands, especially when they accorded with his own desires. He did the only thing he could think of: she was not ready, yet, to stay with him forever, but perhaps, _perhaps_ a single drop of blood, a promise against the offer of eternity, would be enough to let her not forget him.

He cut his finger and watched, entranced, as the crimson drop, glistening like a pomegranate seed between them, melted on her tongue; she stared, wide-eyed, looking beyond the moment and seeing he knew not what.

When he asked, she only said, "Oh… oh, Sev… it's so much bigger than I thought!"

She fell asleep with a smile on her face, dreaming, he suspected, of eternity.

He sent her back to the world of the living with a heavy heart.


	32. Five

He found her kneeling in the fields of Elysium, as the light of Life flared overhead and the Dead rejoiced. She was sobbing, digging her hands into the black earth when he came upon her, alerted by the hot presence of a living mortal in his realm, expecting some lost hero.

"Lily?" he asked, dumbstruck. She was older than he recalled, though not by much, her face sharper and her body more womanly, but her courage still untested, and her hands clean of blood.

She threw herself upon him, still crying. "Sev! Thank god! Thank god! I thought – I thought I might have dreamed you – here – this!"

He brushed away tears with cool hands, and set a kiss upon her brow. _Still so young_ , he thought. "It's not a dream," he reassured her. "But you must go back. You don't belong here. Not yet."

"I _will_ , though, won't I? I dreamed of making flowers bloom and killing and dying and ruling as your queen. We had eternity together! And I told you, the other you, that we would be together always – It's real, right? All this is real, everything I dreamed? Promise me, Sev!"

"Not yet, but it will be. I promise," he whispered. "I promise."

She took a deep and shuddering breath, letting it out slowly. "Good. Good. Thank you." And then she looked up at him, the too-bright green of her eyes only enhanced by her tears. "I think I love you," she said. She sounded surprised. "I don't know what I would have done if you'd said it wasn't true."

He smiled sardonically. "Run away to the world of the dead?" he suggested mockingly. She hit him, and he laughed, sixteen again, for a moment, caught up in the innocent joy of her company. "How did you even _get_ here?"

She smirked. "I made the pain offering, in the ritual – the Samhain ritual. And then… then I kind of just… walked into the fire."

"You walked. Into the fire. The fire that serves as a portal through the veil? Just walked straight into it? _Seriously,_ Lily? What kind of mad idea – ?" He cut himself off as she glared at him.

"It worked, didn't it? Besides, it felt… right, at the time." She shrugged, utterly remorseless for the risk she had taken.

He shook his head slowly. "I always knew you were insane…" he teased her.

She hit him again. "Explains why I was ever friends with you, doesn't it?"

It was keenly painful to have her so near, so reminiscent of the Lily he had once known, to know that she could be – would be – and yet wasn't quite the woman he wanted, _needed_ to stand by his side. A sweet but undeniable torture.

He could not bear it.

"You must go back," he repeated, all levity gone from his tone. "It's not time – not yet."

"What does _time_ mean _here_?" she scoffed.

He could not help the sorrow in his voice as he answered: "Here? Nothing. But out there? You have a part to play, you know."

She rolled her eyes. "Perfect Prefect Lily Evans, Shining Example of Mudblood Competence, you mean?"

"Don't call yourself that," he rebuked her gently. "And no. I mean Lily Evans, frontline Healer, ruthless ritualist, witch who holds the key to the war in the palm of her perfect, not-yet-bloodstained hand." He kissed the palm in question before meeting her eyes again.

There was a hint of wild viciousness in her answering grin. "Alright, then. I'll go back, if it's that important. But promise me I'll get to stay here with you, someday, forever."

"Never doubt it, Lily," he replied, as solemnly as he could, given the joy which rose up in him every time she claimed her place by her side. "You and I, we belong together. Always."

He sent her back with another drop of blood, praying to whatever gods might pray to that he was doing this right; that she would, one day, be his forever.


	33. Four

The third time Severus found Lily in his realm, she wore neither the wide-eyed amazement of her youth nor the wild, half-mad desperation of her last foray into death. She was worried.

She sat beside the River Cocytus, listening to the woes of the restless spirits that dwelt within. She smiled when he approached, but the expression did not reach her eyes.

"Hello, Sev. Hades. I remember more, now, you know."

"Do you?" He didn't.

She nodded. "Bits and pieces. I remember seeing you across a battlefield, and a baby, and the Dark Wanker… I remember facing him down, before the Avada… And I remember springtime in a valley, a mountain valley, like Hogwarts, but not. And dancing, making flowers bloom. You remember how I used to play with flowers, before I knew magic was real? Like that, but more. I remember open skies, and my mother's love – except it wasn't _my_ mum – and feeling… happy, and _safe_ … but it… it wasn't enough. Like Cokeworth wasn't enough, and Hogwarts isn't. There's more to life than _that_ , that… illusion, that all the world is perfect and lovely, and we're children and the war can't touch us."

He joined her, kneeling on the dark earth, and wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders.

She leaned into him. "I'm worried, Sev. I'm worried about the war, and about you, and _him_ and – you told me, last time, that I held the key to the war, but… can't you tell me what that is? If – I mean, I could end it. That's what you meant, right? If there's something I can do, I'd rather do it _now_ , before _they_ take you – the other you – away from me forever!"

He held her close, wishing he could tell her what to do, how to end the war twenty years early, how they could be happy together on the mortal plane… but he felt the hand of Fate holding him back. Whatever she had done – whatever she would do – she must do it without his interference, changing nothing, for just as a time traveler could not alter their own future with their knowledge of it, he would surely never become Hades if he had never suffered as Severus.

"We're seventeen, now, Sev – they're going to try to make you take the Mark, I know it! You're going to be enslaved to that – that _monster_ , and, and…"

His heart was breaking, to see her so concerned for him, especially knowing as he did the horrors in store for his younger self over the next twenty years. But it was those twenty years that had made him the man he was when he died. He hushed her gently. "It's okay, Lily. I'll be fine. Look," he rolled back his left sleeve, barring clean, pale skin. "Even… even if I must take the mark… it will not be forever. Just… just know that what is coming, must come, if we are to have our eternity, in the end."

"But – but what if… Sev, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'll never see you again!"

He smiled. "Of course you will. Don't be thick. You'll see me here."

" _Please_ , Sev! You know I don't beg, but _I'm begging you_ , tell me – tell me what happens! I need to know!"

He sighed. "I can't, Lily. You'll… you'll understand why, some day. You must play your part without me, if it's all to work out in the end."

He watched, resigned, as anger flared within her, driving away her melancholy. "Fine, then!" she stood abruptly, pushing herself away from him. " _Fine!_ Send me back! You might as well, if you don't care enough to even tell me one little thing that might help me save the bloody world, or, you know, just the one person I care about!"

"Lily…"

"Shut up, Sev! I want to go home. Send me home, right now, or I swear to all the gods and powers, I will march right back through the goddamn portal, and fuck the consequences!"

She glared at him as she accepted a third drop of his blood, before her eyes went unseeing, lost in memories of the future and other lives half-lived.

"I love you, too, you know," he whispered, sending her back. "Don't worry: no matter what happens, it's not the end of the world."


	34. Three

It's a mischievous Lily, her aura crackling with power and no longer quite mortal, who wakes him with a kiss a year or a moment later. This time, she refuses to tell him how she crossed the Veil with a shrug and a secretive smile. She is no longer at Hogwarts, he knows, for there are shadows in her eyes and she carries herself with the confidence of one who has seen battle, and knows, now, what it is to hold in one's hands the terrible power of life and death over another human being. For the first time, he thinks that she might, possibly, finally, be the queen has been (im)patiently awaiting.

He does not send her back, and she does not demand to return. For the second time, she rules beside him, this time from her own throne, when she is not designing some new and terrible fate for the damned.

He is not exempted from her tortures. She taunts him like Tantalus, teasing and half-offering what he knows she has no intention of delivering. Did he not watch her play this game with Potter and Black? With Longbottom and Carson, and even Avery and Kronk? (For a time it was her favorite sport, to make the young Death Eaters hate themselves for wanting her.) He knows better than to fall for her flirtations, though he finds her far more attractive now than he did at seventeen, in their one and only ill-fated sex-ritual. He wonders whether it is he who has changed, growing apart from her these long years, or she, who, here, does not so closely resemble the girl whom he once called 'sister.'

There is a rage in her which will not abate, now, which that other, younger Lily did not have. It is driven, he knows, by her knowledge of the ongoing war she has abandoned to tarry here.

He does not mention it.

Neither does she, until the day she encounters the shades of those who died at Moel Tŷ Uchaf, the young witches and wizards she was unable to save, and some she had herself cursed and killed. A wizard, one of those bound for Tartarus, screams at her, venting his fury on realizing his death, blaming her and a healing spell corrupted to stop his heart. He shouts his rage, railing against the Light and the mudbloods like her who are ruining everything that is good about Magical Britain.

She pretends it doesn't bother her, but he can see that it does.

A short time later, she comes to him, in the throne room, all the joy and energy gone from her, wearing uncharacteristic seriousness in its place. She kneels as a penitent, instead of taking her place at his side, asking, she explains, not for his compliance, but his understanding.

She does not want him to be wroth with her, but her conscience has finally caught up with her.

"I must go back," she says. "The Light – they need me. As much as I want to… I can't just abandon them."

He protests, but only for the sake of form: he knows it is true as well as she. She cannot avoid the reality of her war, even here, and she is too caring by half to abandon it entirely. The only question he had ever really had was _when_ she would go back.

After only a short argument, he agrees.

"I shall steal you away again, in the end, though," he promises.

"Of course you will," she laughs, though he doesn't find it funny. "We all have to die sometime."

Still playing the tease, she sucks at his fingertip, as though savoring the taste of him, rather than allowing the fourth drop to fall onto her tongue like the others. She steps back from him with a wink and turns on the spot, as though apparating.

She is gone, and Severus can only hope that whatever means she has discovered for transporting herself is as effective as his own method for sending her back to the time and place she has left.

He feels unusually forlorn as he realizes that she is coming into her own and no longer needs him, then joyful as he realizes that it is only a matter of time until she is his equal and can take her place beside him as such.


	35. Two

It is a shaken and exhilarated Lily who appears before him a year later, materializing from the shadows like any of the lesser gods of his realm.

She pounces on him, dragging him off to their bed, and only half-explains her state between kisses, far more interested in fucking him senseless than telling him what has happened.

He indulges her. He never could say 'no' to her, even when he wanted to, and he most certainly doesn't want to in that moment. There will be time enough for explanations later.

It is nothing like their first (and only other) time together. _That_ was exceedingly awkward. He had been a virgin and unready, and she so very young: both of them innocent, for all they thought themselves wise in the ways of magic and the world.

Now they have seen war, seen the heights and depths of which the human soul is capable. They know not only magic and the world, but their place in it. (Together, _always._ ) _This_ is poetry embodied: the coming-together of two halves too long divided.

They lie together after, sated. Severus feels as though his life – or his afterlife, perhaps – is now complete. Lily looks at him and gives him a rueful smile.

"I shouldn't have done that," she admits.

"Do you regret it?" He knows she doesn't.

"No. But I'm married now, you know."

Severus sneers. "Potter is less than nothing compared to you and I."

She laughs, for they both know it is true. Here they are timeless and eternal, power incarnate. Potter is, will be, simply another dreamer in the Fields of Asphodel when he finally arrives. "I did it, Sev," she grins.

"Did what?" He still does not understand the disjointed explanation he was only half-listening to as she seduced him.

"Remember when I first came here? I could visit the mortals who called for me, but I could do nothing in their world but speak to them. But today… I called the Dead, and they obeyed me as though I were standing on the banks of the Styx. They rose up and they killed for me, when I ordered them. It was _glorious_ , Sev. For this one minute, I could feel it all coming together!"

He knows the battle she is talking about – it is the one where he once felt relief to see some evidence that she was not entirely lost to the Light (a fear which, in retrospect, seems rather ridiculous: the Queen of Death, a Light witch? Never). He is at a loss to answer, though he is overjoyed at the thought that she is coming into her own as a goddess in truth, wielding the power of their realm even on the mortal plane. He simply kisses her again, and she responds as though she will devour him, beginning with his mouth.

When she is finally exhausted, he watches her sleep for some time, thinking on her appearances in his world. He suspects that their time together has already happened in the life he once lived and she is still living, like a time-loop. Knowing what he knows now of the circumstances of the Diagon Alley Massacre, it is clear: they can do nothing that will break the continuity of history. She is nineteen, now, and she must return to the land of the living. There are still two more years before he can claim her as his own, for eternity.

The longer he keeps her here, the longer that time will be in coming. He is fairly certain that even now, she can only come to him on Samhain, when the Veil between their worlds is thin. To allow her to tarry when she comes is only to delay the day when she finally will not have to leave him again.

Perhaps it is selfish, for the year will pass much more quickly for him than for her, but he paints her lips with the fifth drop of blood (He watches, fascinated, as her tongue ghosts over them in her sleep.) and sends her back to the land of the living.


	36. One

He expects her to be angry with him for sending her away without her consent when she returns, but she is not.

She is preoccupied, and she has a very important question: "Sev, is this real? I mean, I know it's real, but _really_ real? Do I… does my body come here _physically_? Because, well… I have a son, now. He was born nine months after Samhain. He looks like James, but…"

Severus is struck dumb.

Could Harry Potter have been his son all along?

There would be a certain symmetry in it, to be sure, creating yet more parallels between Riddle and Lily and Harry, all three of them hated by absent fathers, who did not know their relationship until it was too late to matter, if they had ever known at all.

It would make sense, if Potter – Harry – had been so strangely immune to death not through Dumbledore's machinations or Lily's or the design of the Moirai, but because it was, in fact, his birthright.

Could the Gryffindorish, noble, responsible streak he had attributed to Potter be truly the result of a combination of the best of Lily's recklessness and his own sense of loyalty and duty? He would not have thought so in life, but his afterlife has since given him a different perspective of himself.

But no, Harry Potter was always the spitting image of James as a boy. He had the same attitude, if slightly tempered by his upbringing. Whether it was simply the influence of Gryffindor House or some desire to live up to the legends of the man he was told was his father, the younger Potter was honest and direct in a way neither Lily nor Severus ever had been: James' son regardless of his biological parentage.

"I do not know," he admits, in answer to the actual question: whether Lily is physically present. "But I do know your son, and I have never doubted that he is a Potter." This he tells her with a habitual sneer, though he drops it to add: "You would have been proud of him, Lily."

She gives him a sad smile. "I'm not going to see him grow up, am I?" Before he can answer, she laughs, unamused. "It's okay, I know, you can't say. But I remember. I remember facing down That Bastard, wandless, and watching death come for me, and knowing I'm going home. And knowing that Harry… knowing he's going to live. That he will be safe from Old Snakeface." He wants to cringe, to tell her how very wrong she is, to tell her that she must plan further ahead if she wishes to spare her son a life of constant persecution by the undead Dark Lord, but the hand of Fate stays him. This, like so much else, he must allow to unfold as it once did, for this moment to exist. "I should go back to him," she says.

He nods. It is understandable, that she would want to spend as much time as she can with her babe, rather than here, without him. And there is only another year of it, he knows.

"Next time... Next time you come here, you must stay," he warns her.

"I will be ready," she says, determination glinting in Avada-green eyes. They soften as she adds, "I love you, Sev."

"I love you, too, Lily."

He offers her their now-customary drop of blood, a parting promise that they will see each other again. She kisses it off his fingertip, and slips through his fingers before he can be tempted to damn the Fates and seal their bond at once.

Next time… next time is forever, he thinks, willing time to pass more quickly.


	37. Ground Zero

Next time, the last time, Lily does not come to Severus.

He goes to her, as the Killing Curse is cast and her soul, unnaturally bound to the mortal plane, cries out to his.

 _Oh, Lily, what have you done now?_ he thinks, as he appears, invisible to all but the witch, who is preoccupied by her own ritual sacrifice twisting her soul into a shield for her child as the Dark Lord turns his wand upon him.

Her body is cooling on the ground, and the runes carved into the walls and floor, warding the child, practically crackle with energy. Had she _intended_ for the Dark Lord to use a Killing Curse on her son? Hardly any other spell would breach the defenses she had laid around the crib.

And then there is another flash of green, and her soul is ripped away from the boy, its last tie to the mortal plane severed. He catches her, holding her close as she shakes with the pain of being ripped from life not once, but twice, in the space of a few seconds.

The light show as the wards react to the intrusion is spectacular. Adrestia nods at the pair of them in passing as she proceeds to destroy the Dark Lord's body, her righteous wrath against he who would attempt to kill an innocent babe scything it into smaller and smaller pieces, until there is nothing left of him but a fine mist of blood in the air. She vents her remaining fury on the room and the house, the boy safe by virtue of his innocence, but all else at her mercy.

Only Severus notices the Dark Lord's soul attempting to tear itself free of the not-yet-sealed soul protection on the boy, and he only because he knew to look for it.

When the goddess of redress has done wreaking her destruction, she bows to Lily.

"Is it well done, my lady?" she asks.

Lily nods. "Thank you, Adrestia."

When she is gone, Severus asks, "Are you alright?"

"Dying _hurts_ ," his lady complains. "All that time spent in the underworld, you'd think someone would've mentioned that!"

He laughs at the sheer inconsequential cheek of her response. "Well, it's over now," he says consolingly.

She smiles, but exhaustion weighs heavy in every line of her face. She looks around the room, taking in her squalling son and the devastation she visited upon the space with her invocation of Adrestia. "Didn't I tell you once that I would destroy anyone who tried to keep us apart?" she asks, trying for nonchalance. She misses it by a hair, her eyes still on the boy.

"He'll be fine, Lily," Severus assures her. "Your part is done."

And finally she turns to him too-green eyes shimmering behind unshed tears. "Steal me away from the Light, Sev," she whispers.

He hears, ' _Take me home_.'

He seals their bond with a kiss, and it is done.


	38. Ever After

.

* * *

VII. Ever After

* * *

.


	39. Always

In the moment their lips met, they fell, again, out of time, much as Severus had when he first died, consciousness expanding to take in the whole of existence in its terrifying, ever-shifting complexity.

This time, Lily walked by his side as he followed the twists and turns of Fate, the roads not travelled and lives not lived. They haunted the lives of the others they could recall who shared with them the honor of being Avatars to their gods and played out the stories enshrined in myth. They danced without shame before the eyes of their fellow gods, and dared them to object. At last they settled back in the throne room in his black castle in the underworld, exquisitely aware of their place in the universe, yet bound again to their own forms, and together, finally, as they were always meant to be.

"Is this real?" he asked, wondering as she stood before him how it could be true – how he could possibly have earned a happy ending, against all the odds.

She smiled, eyes laughing, full of boundless confidence and fearless freedom: life, unfettered. "Does it matter?"

"No."

It really didn't.

He relaxed, and at long last allowed his consciousness to expand into oblivion.


	40. WTF? (The AN Chapter)

***This is an AN Chapter***

I don't really know how to categorize this little story. It's canon compliant to the same extent that 'The Truth Is, It Wasn't Like That' is canon compliant. It kind of takes the Mary Potter backstory and applies it to the events of the books, I guess, but it doesn't really work to _establish_ more background for Mary Potter, though, because the narration is even more unreliable than usual.

The story is intended to be a bit ambiguous, but in case you're one of those people who can't stand ambiguity and absolutely MUST know what's going on here, Severus died in the Shrieking Shack.

He is dead from the very first scene, when he references his death as a dream.

In the Mary Potter AU scheme of magic, when a person dies, it takes some time – three days – for their consciousness to dissipate and become one with the magic of the universe: the collective consciousness of the Dead is the basis of the Deathly Power. Time is entirely subjective for the Dead (and for those in the process of becoming one with the Dead), meaning those three days can seem like an instant, or eternity. It is not uncommon for an individual to come up with some sort of dream-like construction of an afterlife to explain what is happening to them as they lose their sense of self entirely.

This is Severus' dying dream: his process of coming to terms with his life and his relationship with Lily (which was never entirely sisterly, no matter what he tells himself and Mary, and never entirely romantic, no matter what Dumbledore and Harry believe), and re-writing his own story to give himself a happy ending.

If the Afterlife were really like his Hades, he would be a dreamer in the Fields of Asphodel.

Lily wasn't really quite as vicious as he paints her in the First Act, nor as innocent as he paints her in the Mary Potter Year 4 Preview. Those memories are cherry-picked to appeal to Mary and shape her impression of him and his relationship with Lily, while the ones shown here are tweaked slightly to make them fit better with his dream.

An 'Avatar' in Mary Potter is when an aspect of a Power possesses a person in the mundane world directly and takes over their life, which only happens when their mind and soul resonates perfectly with the Power to whom they are dedicated. Bellatrix is far closer to becoming an avatar of Eris than Severus is to becoming an avatar of Hades. He is not a ritualist himself; he has simply twisted the explanation Lily gave him in passing twenty-five years before his death to suit the dream-explanation.

All the things Severus experiences in Hades and the way he interacts with Lily, like the way she always appears on Samhain and the vague impression he has of her final showdown with Voldemort, are similarly based on Severus' knowledge, or the way he imagines things ought to be in the afterlife. The fact that it _is_ a dream allows him to overlook the cracks and plot-holes in his little reality.

The part where he is able to perceive the Tapestry, though, because he is no longer a part of the world, is actually how death works in the MP universe. He almost jumps straight into it, but gets cold feet when he realizes that he and Lily never got their happy ending, and spends some time imagining that instead, before allowing his consciousness to fade.

RIP, Severus Snape.


End file.
